Mobile Phone Intervention for Physical Activity Maintenance in African American Men (MobileMen)

African American men experience health disparities across a number of preventable chronic
diseases, including cardiovascular disease, strokes, obesity, and diabetes. Physical activity
(PA) is a modifiable risk factor for these conditions. The few PA promotion studies that have
included African American men have resulted in successful short-term behavior change, yet in
order for the health benefits of PA to be realized, PA levels must be maintained. While
behavior change maintenance programs have been shown to assist participants in sustaining
behavior change, we were unable to identify any studies that have developed maintenance
programs specifically targeting African American men. The purpose of this proposal is to
develop a PA maintenance program for African American men. This Phase I Small Business
Technology Transfer (STTR) project, MobileMen, will deliver the intervention utilizing mobile
health (mHealth) technology and therefore, will be led by researchers and multimedia
developers at Klein Buendel, Inc. (KB) and Pennington Biomedical Research Center (Dr. Newton,
PI). The use of mHealth, as opposed to other avenues of intervention delivery, is based on
published reports documenting that African Americans perceive mobile technology as an
acceptable means of intervention delivery. In addition, ownership of smartphones and the use
of text messaging are highest among African Americans compared to other ethnic groups. There
is a need to tailor this intervention towards African American men because they have unique
gender role beliefs which influence exercise promotion. There is also increasing recognition
of the need for researchers to develop interventions in collaboration with the target
population. Therefore, the current proposal will involve conducting formative research with
African American men to identify the key elements for program development. The fact that
mHealth is acceptable to- and the fact that the application will be developed in
collaboration with African American men, leads us to hypothesize that African American men
will view the mHealth intervention as acceptable, feasible, and usable. In this Phase I STTR,
KB will: (1) conduct multi-method formative research to guide app design and content, (2)
produce a functioning app prototype, and (3) conduct usability testing on the prototype for
functionality, ease of use, and interest among African American men. To KB's knowledge, no
study has utilized mobile phones as a means of effecting PA levels in African American men.
MobileMen will address an unmet need in the marketplace as it will be the first smartphone
app that is targeted toward PA maintenance in African American men.

Inclusion Criteria:

- Owns a smartphone and speaks and reads English, lives in the Greater Baton Rouge area,
and consents to participate.

Exclusion Criteria:

- Cognitive impairment that would interfere with participating in a group discussion,
unwilling to be audio and video-recorded, or unwilling to give written informed
consent.