NCT05956886

Sleep Chatbot Intervention for Emerging Black/African American Adults

Artificial Intelligence Sleep Chatbot in Emerging Black/African American Adults With Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: a Feasibility Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 24 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Delaware · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 25 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Unhealthy sleep and cardiometabolic risk are two major public health concerns in emerging Black/African American (BAA) adults. Evidence-based sleep interventions such as cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) are available but not aligned with the needs of this at-risk group. Innovative work on the development of an artificial intelligence sleep chatbot using CBT-I guidelines will provide scalable and efficient sleep interventions for emerging BAA adults.

Detailed description

Abnormal metabolic syndrome (MetS) components affect up to 40% of emerging adults (18-25 years), particularly Black/African Americans (BAA). MetS risk in early life tracks into adulthood and predicts cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes mellitus later in life. Unhealthy sleep is a known modifiable factor for MetS components. However, the prevalence of unhealthy sleep (up to 60%) in emerging adults is alarming, potentially exacerbating downstream future cardiometabolic health. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is an evidence-based intervention for unhealthy sleep that improves both sleep quantity and quality. Compared with traditional in-person intervention paradigms, digital CBT-I has comparable efficacy with enhanced accessibility and affordability. However, current digital CBT-I based programs are unable to deliver tailored content and interactive services in a humanlike way, thus are unable to meet the needs of emerging BAA adults at risk for MetS. Building on prior work by the team, the investigators will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and refine an AI sleep chatbot using CBT-I guidelines and examine its feasibility and efficacy in a 4-week clinical trial in short-or-poor sleeping, emerging BAA adults with at least one MetS factor.

Conditions

• Sleep Deprivation
• Insomnia
• Metabolic Syndrome

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	sleep chatbot	Personalized intervention algorithms will be developed based on CBT-I guidelines, focus group data, individual sleep baseline information and self-reported prioritized sleep goals. The CBT-I intervention will focus on principles of sleep restriction and stimulus control, with other CBT-I components used as on-demand content. The sleep chatbot system will facilitate sleep goal-setting with the participant and communicate weekly behavioral prescriptions and educational modules. After baseline data collection, the research coordinator will provide intervention orientation and set up the first-week sleep modification goal during the in-person/Zoom meeting. Sleep modification goals in the remaining weeks will be developed through the participant-chatbot interaction. The Chatbot system will send sleep-related information and behavioral reminders/feedback based on the interactive conversation with participants. Participants will also complete a sleep diary prompted by a chatbot.

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-09-04
• Primary completion: 2025-02-05
• Completion: 2025-02-05
• First posted: 2023-07-24
• Last updated: 2025-04-04

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States