Intern Health Study 2022 and 2023 (IHS)

University of Michigan

Status: Completed

Conditions: Physical Activity; Mood; Depression; Sleep

Treatments: Behavioral: Intern Health Study behavioral change mobile notification

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05436145

MH-101459

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this trial is to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention (delivered through a smartphone) for improving the mood, physical activity, and sleep of medical interns.

Full description

Due to their high stress workloads, medical interns suffer from depression at higher rates than the general population. Interns also tend to have lower sleep and decreased physical activity. The goal of this trial is to evaluate the efficacy of a mobile health intervention intending to help improve the mental health of medical interns. The intervention sends mobile phone notifications which aim to help interns improve their mood, maintain physical activity, and obtain adequate sleep during their internship year.

The primary aim of the study is to evaluate how notifications affect participants' weekly mood, as measured through a daily one question mood survey. The second primary aim of the study is to evaluate how notifications affect participants' long-term mental health, as measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire. The first secondary aim is to evaluate how mood notifications affect participants' weekly mood. The second secondary aim is to evaluate how activity notifications affect participants' weekly step count. The third secondary aim is to evaluate how sleep notifications affect participants' weekly sleep duration. In order to better optimize notification delivery, the final aim (exploratory) is to understand moderators of these effects. Moderators of interest are previous week's mood, previous week's step count, previous week's sleep duration, study week, sex, previous history of depression, and baseline neuroticism.

Enrollment: 2,562 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Medical intern during the 2022-2023 or 2023-2024 internship years
• iPhone or Android phone user
• Logged into the Intern Health Study mobile app, completed consent, and filled out baseline survey by June 30 prior to the start of intern year

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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2,562 participants in 1 patient group

Within-participant micro-randomization

Experimental group

Description:

Each day in the study, with probability .5 for each, a participant is randomized to receive a notification that day or no notification that day. If a participant is assigned to receive a notification that day, 1 message set will be randomly selected from a pool of 60 message sets. There are 2 types of message sets: 1) Support and 2) Consequences. If a participant is assigned to receive a Support message set, they will be randomized to receive either the Emotional or Practical Support version. If a participant is assigned to receive a Consequences message set, they will be randomized to receive either the Gain Framed or Loss Framed version.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Intern Health Study behavioral change mobile notification