Smart Walk App for African American Women With Obesity

The Smart Walk app is designed to provide a culturally tailored smartphone-delivered physical activity (PA) intervention that increases PA and reduces cardiometabolic disease risk among insufficiently active African American women with obesity. Sixty participants will be randomized to receive the Smart Walk PA intervention or a wellness comparison condition. Participants will be tracked over an 8-month period to evaluate feasibility, acceptability, and outcomes associated with the Smart Walk PA intervention.

This mobile application uses the device’s built-in sensor to track steps, distance traveled, calories burned, and more. This data can then be analyzed and reported on through a number of different graphing functions. Using this data, users can track and improve their health, fitness, and weight loss goals.

To allow for PA self-monitoring, Smart Walk includes a static weekly goal of 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic PA or greater. In addition, the Smart Walk application will allow for a user to track their daily and weekly MVPA through an interactive graphing function. During the study, participants will be provided with a Fitbit Alta HR activity monitor (Fitbit Inc, San Francisco CA) to wear throughout the trial. The data collected by the Fitbit will integrate with the Smart Walk application, allowing participants to view/track their minutes of MVPA.

To ensure participants do not receive a commercial Fitbit software message or prompt on their device, during the baseline assessment, study staff will disable all commercial Fitbit software notifications and/or prompts in the Smart Walk application. This will also minimize potential confounding factors in the measurement of MVPA.