A Community Participatory Approach to Creating Contextually Tailored mHealth Notifications: myBPmyLife Project

Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) are a novel approach to mobile health (mHealth) interventions, sending contextually tailored behavior change notifications to participants when they are more likely to engage, determined by data from wearable devices. We describe a community participatory approach to JITAI notification development for the myBPmyLife Project, a JITAI focused on decreasing sodium consumption and increasing physical activity to reduce blood pressure. Eighty-six participants were interviewed, 50 at a federally qualified health center (FQHC) and 36 at a university clinic. Participants were asked to provide encouraging physical activity and low-sodium diet notifications and provided feedback on researcher-generated notifications to inform revisions. Participant notifications were thematically analyzed using an inductive approach. Participants noted challenging vocabulary, phrasing, and culturally incongruent suggestions in some of the researcher-generated notifications. Community-generated notifications were more direct, used colloquial language, and contained themes of grace. The FQHC participants' notifications expressed more compassion, religiosity, and addressed health-related social needs. University clinic participants' notifications frequently focused on office environments. In summary, our participatory approach to notification development embedded a distinctive community voice within our notifications. Our approach may be generalizable to other communities and serve as a model to create tailored mHealth notifications to their focus population.

Correction: Community-Led, Cross-Sector Partnership of Housing and Health Care to Promote Aging in Place (Unite Health Project): Protocol for a Prospective Observational Study

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/47855.].

Community-Led, Cross-Sector Partnership of Housing and Health Care to Promote Aging in Place (Unite Health Project): Protocol for a Prospective Observational Study

BACKGROUND

For many older Americans, aging in place is their preferred living arrangement. Minoritized and socioeconomically disadvantaged older adults are up to 3 times more likely to experience disability than other groups, which increases their likelihood of being unable to age in place. Bold ideas to facilitate aging in place, particularly among vulnerable populations, are needed. One such idea is the Unite care model, a community-initiated, academic-supported, cross-sector initiative that combines 2 sectors: housing and health care. The Unite care model colocates a federally qualified health center clinic on an older adult affordable housing campus in Flint, Michigan.

OBJECTIVE

There are two aims to this study. Aim 1 is to evaluate the implementation of the Unite care model in terms of acceptability, adoption, and penetration. Aim 2 is to determine which older adults use the care model and whether the care model promotes aging in place through risk factor reduction and improvement in the physical and social environment.

METHODS

We will assess the care model using a concurrent, exploratory mixed methods design. For aim 1, acceptability will be assessed through semistructured interviews with key stakeholder groups; adoption and penetration will be assessed using housing and health care records. For aim 2, residents residing in the Unite clinic building will participate in structured outcome assessments at 6 and 12 months. Risk factor reduction will be measured by change in systolic blood pressure from baseline to 12 months and change in the physical and social environment (item counts) will also be assessed from baseline to 12 months.

RESULTS

Data collection for aim 1 began in July 2021 and is anticipated to end in April 2023. Data collection for aim 2 began in June 2021 and concluded in November 2022. Data analysis for aim 1 is anticipated to begin in the summer of 2023 and analysis for aim 2 will begin in the spring of 2023.

CONCLUSIONS

If successful, the Unite care model could serve as a new care model to promote aging in place among older adults living in poverty and older Black Americans. The results of this proposal will inform whether larger scale testing of this new model of care is warranted.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

DERR1-10.2196/47855.

Engagement in Self-Measured Blood Pressure Monitoring among Medically Under-resourced participants: A Digital Framework Qualitative Study from the Reach Out Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND

Mobile health (mHealth) interventions serve as a scalable opportunity to engage people with hypertension in self-measured blood pressure (SMBP) monitoring, an evidence-based approach to lowering blood pressure (BP) and improving BP control. Reach Out is an SMS text messaging-based SMBP mHealth trial that aims to reduce BP among hypertensive patients recruited from the emergency department of a safety net hospital in a low-income, predominately Black city.

OBJECTIVE

As the benefits of Reach Out are predicated on participants' engagement with the intervention, we sought to understand participants' determinants of engagement via prompted SMBP with personalized feedback (SMBP+feedback).

METHODS

We conducted semistructured telephone interviews based on the digital behavior change interventions framework. Participants were purposively sampled from 3 engagement categories: high engagers (≥80% response to SMBP prompts), low engagers (≤20% response to BP prompts), and early enders (participants who withdrew from the trial).

RESULTS

We conducted interviews with 13 participants, of whom 7 (54%) were Black, with a mean age of 53.6 (SD 13.25) years. Early enders were less likely to be diagnosed with hypertension prior to Reach Out, less likely to have a primary care provider, and less likely to be taking antihypertensive medications than their counterparts. Overall, participants liked the SMS text messaging design of the intervention, including the SMBP+feedback. Several participants across all levels of engagement expressed interest in and identified the benefit of enrolling in the intervention with a partner of their choice. High engagers expressed the greatest understanding of the intervention, the least number of health-related social needs, and the greatest social support to engage in SMBP. Low engagers and early enders shared a mixed understanding of the intervention and less social support compared to high engagers. Participation decreased as social needs increased, with early enders sharing the greatest amount of resource insecurity apart from a notable exception of a high engager with high health-related social needs.

CONCLUSIONS

Prompted SMBP+feedback was perceived favorably by all participants. To enhance SMBP engagement, future studies could consider greater support in the initiation of SMBP, evaluating and addressing participants' unmet health-related social needs, as well as strategies to cultivate social norms.