Proactive Automatized Lifestyle Intervention (PAL)

University Medicine Greifswald

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Risk Behaviors

Treatments: Behavioral: Proactive Automatized Lifestyle intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05365269

D8 5000 0001

Details and patient eligibility

About

Background: The co-occurrence of health risk behaviors (HRBs), namely of tobacco smoking, insufficient physical activity, unhealthy diet and at-risk alcohol use, more than doubles the risk of cancer, other chronic diseases and mortality; and applies to more than half of adult general populations. However, preventive measures that target all four HRBs and that reach the majority of the target populations and particularly those persons most in need and hard to reach (e.g. with low socio-economic status), are scarce. Electronic interventions may help to efficiently address multiple HRBs in whole populations, such as health care patients. The aim is to investigate the acceptance of a proactive and brief electronic multiple behavior change intervention among general hospital patients with regards to reach, retention, equity in reach and retention, satisfaction and subsequent trajectories of behavior change motivation, HRBs and health.

Methods: A pre-post-intervention study with four time points will be conducted at a general hospital in Germany. Patients admitted to participating medical departments (internal medicine, general surgery, trauma surgery, ear-nose-throat medicine) and aged 18-64 years will be systematically approached and invited to participate, irrespective of reason for admission and HRB profile. Based on HRB profile and on psychological behavior change theory, participants (n=175) will receive individualized computer-generated feedback concerning all four HRBs and motivation-enhancing feedback for up to two HRBs; directly on the ward and 1 and 3 months later. Intervention reach and retention will be determined by the proportion of participants among eligible patients and participants, respectively. Equity in reach and retention will be measured with regards to school education and other socio-demographics. To investigate satisfaction with the intervention and trajectories of motivational measures, HRBs and health measures, a 6-month follow-up will be conducted. Descriptive statistics, multivariate regressions and latent growth modelling will be applied.

Discussion: This study will be the first to investigate the acceptance of a proactive, electronic and brief multiple behavior change intervention among general hospital patients. If reach is high and efficacy established by a randomized controlled trial, the intervention has potential for public health impact in terms of primary and secondary prevention of diseases.

Enrollment: 175 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 64 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• General hospital patients admitted to participating wards of four medical departments (internal medicine, surgical medicine, trauma medicine, ear-nose-throat) at the University Medicine Hospital Greifswald in northeastern Germany

Exclusion criteria

• Cognitively or physically incapable
• Presence of a highly infectious disease
• Discharge or transferral within the first 24 hours
• Already asked for participation during previous hospital stay
• Insufficient language skills
• Employed at the conducting research institute
• Neither telephone nor email

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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175 participants in 1 patient group

Computer-generated feedback on health risk behaviors

Experimental group

Description:

Proactive Automatized Lifestyle intervention Frequency: 3 times (month 0, 1, 3) Dosage: Individually tailored feedback corresponding to about 1-6 pages Duration: 3 months

Treatment:

Behavioral: Proactive Automatized Lifestyle intervention