December 1, 2015 – Constellation

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead:  A multipronged approach seems to help an electronic intervention for cardiovascular disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

mActive is the name of a text-based intervention developed at Johns Hopkins to assist people with cardiovascular disease make lifestyle choices to improve their health.  Seth Martin, a cardiologist who is leading the project, says this intervention engaged a broad range of expertise, which may account for such positive results.

Martin: Part of the reason this may have been successful is because we were able to cross those divides between the research community, the clinical community, and really bring it all together in this study.  I think the opportunity to make this even better is I want to learn more from the patients.  We’re doing focus groups, and other forms of research to learn more from the patients, work with behavioral scientists, technicians and computer scientists to really bring expertise from all these fields to do this the best that it possibly can be done.   :27

Martin says initial results showed women were more responsive than men to the text messages, a disparity he would also like to overcome in upcoming studies.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.