Grant: Operating Grant: CCS/CIHR Action Grants

Need for project Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada. Half of the cancer is preventable through lifestyle changes. However, only about 50% of Canadians are active enough to reap the health benefits. The current COVID-19 pandemic has further decreased physical activity levels and made face-to-face, group, and facility-based physical activity programming impossible. There is a critical need for a scalable, remote and effective solution to promote physical activity for modern-day Canadian families. Goal of project The goal of this project is to develop and conduct pilot test of an adaptive family-based physical activity digital health intervention aimed to prevent cancer. Project description We will work with families to build an adaptive digital health intervention aim to prevent cancer through lifestyle changes. This intervention is designed to dynamically tailor the type, timing, and amount of support based on a person’s environment, motivation and lifestyle behaviour. Afterward, we will evaluate the effects of the intervention improving parental physical activity support for the child and the child's physical activity levels. Future impact Significant future impact includes: 1) We are extending the reach and personalization of cancer prevention care. 2) The methods learned from developing JITAI can be applied to other lifestyle behaviours. The results of this study will inform future efficacy trials. 3) This project will be advancing theory-based behavioural science in the digital health field. Specifically, the adaptive approaches with JITAI are particularly useful to the M-PAC framework used for this study because failed behaviour intentions can be addressed quickly by targeting key reflective, regulatory, and reflexive processes.