Improving Nutritional Choices in Adolescents

The epidemic of excess weight in childhood is impacted by exposure to, and consumption of, fast food and calorie dense foods prepared outside of the home. Black youth are more likely than their peers to live in communities with a high density of fast food restaurants. There is a need for interventions to help adolescents make healthy choices in these obesogenic environments.

Previous research revealed that adolescents welcomed health-related text messages (based on Self Determination Theory and Motivational Interviewing) if they viewed them as personally relevant and if they were received at times when they faced dietary choices. Based on these findings, the following is hypothesized: that delivering messages (tailored to users' preferences and values) at a time and place when they are making a dietary choice (e.g., in a restaurant) will positively influence their choices.

Thus, the Location Initiated Individualized Texts for African American Adolescent Health (LIITA3H) mobile application was developed. This app identifies when users were in a restaurant, automatically sends culturally relevant messages (based on focus group input from the target population) tailored to user preferences and the menu options at their location with the aim of prompting users to make a healthy choice, and allows users to submit an annotated photo response about their food choice.

For this R21 project the following will be achieved: 1) the LIITA3H app will be enhanced by incorporating user input regarding its design and by allowing greater automation in the identification of eating venues, and 2) the impact of the app on the number of visits by users to restaurants, and on the number of calories users consume from these venues will be tested. This will provide data regarding effect size and will form the foundation for a large randomized trial in a larger population and including a greater range of eating venues. A better understanding of how 'just in time" personalized cues to action, made possible by new location-based technology, might alter behavior among a high risk population, will help future efforts to address obesity and other illnesses impacted by lifestyle choices.

As of 2020, due to the influence of the public health emergency, lockdowns prevented any participants from engaging in going to restaurants as they previously would have. Due to the trial beginning in November 2019, no six month app based data was acquired before the lockdown, and research limitations were imposed. When behavioral research of this type was allowed to resume, months later, a very limited time remained before the funded study would have to end. Thus, certain aspects of the protocol and intervention were modified. To be pragmatic under these constrained circumstances, for new participants, the intervention was shortened from 6 months to 1 month. As behavioral change takes longer to be achieved, the 1 month abbreviated trial focused on exploring the functionality of the app to lay the groundwork for future studies.