NCT07283523

Virtual Reality to Combat Weight-Based Implicit Bias: BWH Pilot Study

The Use of Virtual Reality to Combat Weight-Based Implicit Bias Among Physicians in Training at Brigham and Women's Hospital: A Pilot Study

• Status: Enrolling By Invitation
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 52 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Brigham and Women's Hospital · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The goal of this pilot implementation study is to evaluate the impact of a virtual reality (VR) intervention on implicit bias for resident physicians. The main question it aims to answer are: Does watching VR experience of two clinical encounters reduce implicit bias association test scores? Is the VR experience an acceptable intervention tool for reducing implicit bias? Researchers will compare weight-based VR experiences consisting of two observed clinical encounters to a neutral education VR encounter to see if our intervention significantly impacts implicit bias association scores. Participants will be asked 1. Complete Implicit Association test for weight-based bias pre-intervention and post-intervention (immediately, at one week, and one month after the intervention) to assess their implicit bias 2. Watch either experimental clinical encounter videos or neutral education video using a VR headset 3. Participants will also complete an abbreviated IAT related to views on compliance

Conditions

• Implicit Bias
• Implicit Association Test

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	360 Video on a Virtual Reality Headset	Two 360- videos watched via a VR headset where the study subject will witness a positive physician encounter with a compliant obese patient and a negative encounter with a non-compliant non-obese patient
BEHAVIORAL	360-Control Video	A neutral education video from the New England Journal of Medicine watched in a 360-theatre setting via a VR headset

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-11-19
• Primary completion: 2026-11-30
• Completion: 2026-12-31
• First posted: 2025-12-16
• Last updated: 2025-12-16

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States