Rebecca Krukowski, PhD
Rebecca Krukowski, PhD, a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences, has received a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The goal of the project is to find the best (and most efficient) ways to give personalized feedback to people who track or “self-monitor” their diet, exercise, and weight in weight management programs.
Tracking of diet, exercise, and weight is one of the strongest predictors of weight loss success, but many people struggle to stay motivated to track these behaviors without personalized feedback. Personalized feedback provides accountability and support that is very helpful when making lifestyle changes. However, having the time and appropriate training for writing personalized self-monitoring feedback messages is a barrier for programs in many community and clinical settings. Self-monitoring feedback takes a professional about 26 minutes per person per week to craft. For this reason, weight management programs offered in community and clinical settings often are not able to provide personalized feedback, which leads to less effective weight loss programs.
Dr. Krukowski and her team want to solve this problem by creating a semi-automated self-monitoring feedback system– combining human expertise (when needed) with automation (when possible). The study will take place in three phases. In the first phase, the research team will closely examine how the “gold standard” self-monitoring feedback (written by trained professionals) works over the 16-week weight loss program. Three hundred adults in Virginia and across the nation will take part in this stage of the research. The team will study how different types and lengths of feedback impact tracking behaviors and weight loss success. The team will also look at factors such as age, sex, and how quickly participants lose weight, to see how feedback can be better personalized.
In the second phase, the team will develop and then further tweak the semi-automated self-monitoring feedback system, using advice from other trained professionals currently implementing weight management programs. In the final phase, the semi-automated self-monitoring feedback system will be tested with 50 more participants to see how easy it is to use and how well it works.
This semi-automated self-monitoring feedback system could make the most effective weight management programs easier to offer in community and clinical settings. “Our hope is to expand access to effective weight management programs, especially for underserved groups like people living in rural areas,” said Dr. Krukowski. She is also a co-lead of the UVA Community Cancer Control and Obesity Research Center and a member of the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The study is co-led by Kathryn M. Ross, PhD, MPH, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a senior research scientist at the Advocate Aurora Research Institute. The research team also includes experts in computer science from the University of Florida, Drs. Jaime Ruiz and Lisa Anthony, and a biostatistics expert, Dr. Peihua Qiu.
The research team will be recruiting participants for the first phase of this research for the next two years. Individuals interested in learning more about this research can reach out to the study team at AAH-FeedbackStudy@aah.org.
Filed Under: Research