NCT06840028

Effects of Personalized Exercise Prescriptions Through Mobile Health on Physical Activity and Health Outcomes in the Cancer Survivors

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 160 (estimated)
• Sponsor: The University of Tennessee, Knoxville · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Participation in regular physical activity is vital to a healthy lifestyle. Research has shown that regular participation in physical activity among cancer survivors is not only able to improve health outcomes, but is also related to their quality of life. As we live in an age of technology, health wearables and smartphone apps might be one novel manner by which to help cancer survivors increase physical activity as well as improve health outcomes. Yet, the effectiveness of wearable and app as a tool for health promotion among cancer survivors is largely unstudied. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a personalized m-health intervention via fitness wearable (Fitbit Inspire 3) exercise app (sFitRx) on physical activity, weight, quality of life, individual beliefs, and emotions among cancer survivors.

Detailed description

Cancer remains a vital public health concern in the U.S. Research has shown that physical activity (PA) provides many physical and mental health benefits after cancer diagnosis and plays an important role in reducing all-cause and cancer-related mortality, as well as cancer incidence, in cancer survivors (CS). Adopting a physically active lifestyle is therefore crucial to decrease cancer risk and improve cancer prognosis and quality of life. However, most CS do not achieve the recommended 150 min/week of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). This issue is particularly pronounced for CS in low-income, underserved areas who tend to have considerably less access to PA-conducive environments compared to their more affluent peers. It is therefore imperative to study innovative, ease-to-implement health interventions CS that can promote increased engagement and self-regulation of health behaviors, such as PA, while also improving other health outcomes; thereby offering better supportive care. One promising easy-to-implement medium to improve engagement in and self-regulation of health behaviors is mobile health (mHealth), which includes advanced smartphone application technology often combined with wearables and social media to improve the healthcare delivery experience. Researchers have recently applied such technologies with CS to promote improved health through increased PA and reduced sedentary behavior (SB), with observations promising. Despite promising observations, these studies were often conducted with small samples over short durations (less than or equal to three months), with the interventions lacking personalized PA prescriptions informed by back end big data analysis techniques to further improve intervention implementation. As such, examining how a longer-term tailored, big data-informed mHealth PA intervention in CS might improve health and well-being would fill a major literature gap. The investigators thus propose a 12-month randomized-controlled trial to investigate how an mHealth-delivered PA intervention informed by big data analysis (hereafter, 'personalized mHealth intervention') can improve the health and well-being of CS over a 12-month period. Experimental Group participants would receive access to a study-developed mHealth application, sFitRx, that delivers personalized PA programming as well as be provided with a fitness tracker to monitor their habitual PA levels. Comparison Group participants would receive the fitness tracker only. Successful study completion will inform the development of effective, mHealth-delivered PA programs in CS that might guide health professionals in the initiation of such novel programs in lower-income communities with the goal of promoting PA and health in this population.

Conditions

• Cancer Survivors
• Chronic Disease
• Physical Activity
• Cancer Survivorship
• Physical Inactivity
• Physical Activity in Adults

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	mHealth/sFitRx	Experimental Group - Will receive a personalized mHealth application and fitness tracker. Specifically, Experimental Group participants will receive the sFitRx smartphone application that provides weekly personalized PA interventions informed by big data analysis. They will also receive a Fitbit Inspire 3 to track real-time PA, with PA data uploaded to Fitabase. Importantly, the PA data from the Fitbit Inspire 3 will inform the big data analyses used to generate the personalized PA intervention provided by the sFitRx application.
OTHER	Fitness Tracker	Comparison Group - Will receive the Fitbit Inspire 3 only.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-03-01
• Primary completion: 2025-09-01
• Completion: 2026-03-01
• First posted: 2025-02-21
• Last updated: 2025-08-27

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States