Adoption of the Website and Mobile App of a Preventive Health Program Across Neighborhoods With Different Socioeconomic Conditions in the Netherlands: Longitudinal Study

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Abstract

Background

Socioeconomic disparities in the adoption of preventive health programs represent a well-known challenge, with programs delivered via the web serving as a potential solution. The preventive health program examined in this study is a large-scale, open-access web-based platform operating in the Netherlands, which aims to improve the health behaviors and wellness of its participants.

Objective

This study aims to examine the differences in the adoption of the website and mobile app of a web-based preventive health program across socioeconomic groups.

Methods

The 83,466 participants in this longitudinal, nonexperimental study were individuals who had signed up for the health program between July 2012 and September 2019. The rate of program adoption per delivery means was estimated using the Prentice, Williams, and Peterson Gap–Time model, with the measure of neighborhood socioeconomic status (NSES) used to distinguish between population segments with different socioeconomic characteristics. Registration to the health program was voluntary and free, and not within a controlled study setting, allowing the observation of the true rate of adoption.

Results

The estimation results indicate that program adoption across socioeconomic groups varies depending on the program’s delivery means. For the website, higher NSES groups have a higher likelihood of program adoption compared with the lowest NSES group (hazard ratio 1.03, 95% CI 1.01-1.05). For the mobile app, the opposite holds: higher NSES groups have a lower likelihood of program adoption compared with the lowest NSES group (hazard ratio 0.94, 95% CI 0.91-0.97).

Conclusions

Promoting preventive health programs using mobile apps can help to increase program adoption among the lowest socioeconomic segments. Given the increasing use of mobile phones among disadvantaged population groups, structuring future health interventions to include mobile apps as means of delivery can support the stride toward diminishing health disparities.

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Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015

Mohammad Forouzanfar, Ashkan Afshin, Lily T Alexander … (2017)

Summary Background The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2015 provides an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence for risk factor exposure and the attributable burden of disease. By providing national and subnational assessments spanning the past 25 years, this study can inform debates on the importance of addressing risks in context. Methods We used the comparative risk assessment framework developed for previous iterations of the Global Burden of Disease Study to estimate attributable deaths, disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), and trends in exposure by age group, sex, year, and geography for 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks from 1990 to 2015. This study included 388 risk-outcome pairs that met World Cancer Research Fund-defined criteria for convincing or probable evidence. We extracted relative risk and exposure estimates from randomised controlled trials, cohorts, pooled cohorts, household surveys, census data, satellite data, and other sources. We used statistical models to pool data, adjust for bias, and incorporate covariates. We developed a metric that allows comparisons of exposure across risk factors—the summary exposure value. Using the counterfactual scenario of theoretical minimum risk level, we estimated the portion of deaths and DALYs that could be attributed to a given risk. We decomposed trends in attributable burden into contributions from population growth, population age structure, risk exposure, and risk-deleted cause-specific DALY rates. We characterised risk exposure in relation to a Socio-demographic Index (SDI). Findings Between 1990 and 2015, global exposure to unsafe sanitation, household air pollution, childhood underweight, childhood stunting, and smoking each decreased by more than 25%. Global exposure for several occupational risks, high body-mass index (BMI), and drug use increased by more than 25% over the same period. All risks jointly evaluated in 2015 accounted for 57·8% (95% CI 56·6–58·8) of global deaths and 41·2% (39·8–42·8) of DALYs. In 2015, the ten largest contributors to global DALYs among Level 3 risks were high systolic blood pressure (211·8 million [192·7 million to 231·1 million] global DALYs), smoking (148·6 million [134·2 million to 163·1 million]), high fasting plasma glucose (143·1 million [125·1 million to 163·5 million]), high BMI (120·1 million [83·8 million to 158·4 million]), childhood undernutrition (113·3 million [103·9 million to 123·4 million]), ambient particulate matter (103·1 million [90·8 million to 115·1 million]), high total cholesterol (88·7 million [74·6 million to 105·7 million]), household air pollution (85·6 million [66·7 million to 106·1 million]), alcohol use (85·0 million [77·2 million to 93·0 million]), and diets high in sodium (83·0 million [49·3 million to 127·5 million]). From 1990 to 2015, attributable DALYs declined for micronutrient deficiencies, childhood undernutrition, unsafe sanitation and water, and household air pollution; reductions in risk-deleted DALY rates rather than reductions in exposure drove these declines. Rising exposure contributed to notable increases in attributable DALYs from high BMI, high fasting plasma glucose, occupational carcinogens, and drug use. Environmental risks and childhood undernutrition declined steadily with SDI; low physical activity, high BMI, and high fasting plasma glucose increased with SDI. In 119 countries, metabolic risks, such as high BMI and fasting plasma glucose, contributed the most attributable DALYs in 2015. Regionally, smoking still ranked among the leading five risk factors for attributable DALYs in 109 countries; childhood underweight and unsafe sex remained primary drivers of early death and disability in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Interpretation Declines in some key environmental risks have contributed to declines in critical infectious diseases. Some risks appear to be invariant to SDI. Increasing risks, including high BMI, high fasting plasma glucose, drug use, and some occupational exposures, contribute to rising burden from some conditions, but also provide opportunities for intervention. Some highly preventable risks, such as smoking, remain major causes of attributable DALYs, even as exposure is declining. Public policy makers need to pay attention to the risks that are increasingly major contributors to global burden. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Modeling Survival Data: Extending the Cox Model

Terry M. Therneau, Patricia M. Grambsch (2000)

This is a book for statistical practitioners, particularly those who design and analyze studies for survival and event history data. Its goal is to extend the toolkit beyond the basic triad provided by most statistical packages: the Kaplan-Meier estimator, log-rank test, and Cox regression model. Building on recent developments motivated by counting process and martingale theory, it shows the reader how to extend the Cox model to analyse multiple/correlated event data using marginal and random effects (frailty) models. It covers the use of residuals and diagnostic plots to identify influential or outlying observations, assess proportional hazards and examine other aspects of goodness of fit. Other topics include time-dependent covariates and strata, discontinuous intervals of risk, multiple time scales, smoothing and regression splines, and the computation of expected survival curves. A knowledge of counting processes and martingales is not assumed as the early chapters provide an introduction to this area. The focus of the book is on actual data examples, the analysis and interpretation of the results, and computation. The methods are now readily available in SAS and S-Plus and this book gives a hands-on introduction, showing how to implement them in both packages, with worked examples for many data sets. The authors call on their extensive experience and give practical advice, including pitfalls to be avoided. Terry Therneau is Head of the Section of Biostatistics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. He is actively involved in medical consulting, with emphasis in the areas of chronic liver disease, physical medicine, hematology, and laboratory medicine, and is an author on numerous papers in medical and statistical journals. He wrote two of the original SAS procedures for survival analysis (coxregr and survtest), as well as the majority of the S-Plus survival functions. Patricia Grambsch is Associate Professor in the Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. She has collaborated extensively with physicians and public health researchers in chronic liver disease, cancer prevention, hypertension clinical trials and psychiatric research. She is a fellow the American Statistical Association and the author of many papers in medical and statistical journals.

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The Law of Attrition

Gunther Eysenbach (2005)

In an ongoing effort of this Journal to develop and further the theories, models, and best practices around eHealth research, this paper argues for the need for a “science of attrition”, that is, a need to develop models for discontinuation of eHealth applications and the related phenomenon of participants dropping out of eHealth trials. What I call “law of attrition” here is the observation that in any eHealth trial a substantial proportion of users drop out before completion or stop using the appplication. This feature of eHealth trials is a distinct characteristic compared to, for example, drug trials. The traditional clinical trial and evidence-based medicine paradigm stipulates that high dropout rates make trials less believable. Consequently eHealth researchers tend to gloss over high dropout rates, or not to publish their study results at all, as they see their studies as failures. However, for many eHealth trials, in particular those conducted on the Internet and in particular with self-help applications, high dropout rates may be a natural and typical feature. Usage metrics and determinants of attrition should be highlighted, measured, analyzed, and discussed. This also includes analyzing and reporting the characteristics of the subpopulation for which the application eventually “works”, ie, those who stay in the trial and use it. For the question of what works and what does not, such attrition measures are as important to report as pure efficacy measures from intention-to-treat (ITT) analyses. In cases of high dropout rates efficacy measures underestimate the impact of an application on a population which continues to use it. Methods of analyzing attrition curves can be drawn from survival analysis methods, eg, the Kaplan-Meier analysis and proportional hazards regression analysis (Cox model). Measures to be reported include the relative risk of dropping out or of stopping the use of an application, as well as a “usage half-life”, and models reporting demographic and other factors predicting usage discontinuation in a population. Differential dropout or usage rates between two interventions could be a standard metric for the “usability efficacy” of a system. A “run-in and withdrawal” trial design is suggested as a methodological innovation for Internet-based trials with a high number of initial dropouts/nonusers and a stable group of hardcore users.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Elena Agachi:

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3887-3774

Department of MarketingFaculty of Economics and BusinessUniversity of GroningenPO Box 800Groningen, 9700 AVNetherlands31 50 363 3686e.agachi@rug.nl

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): JMIR Hum Factors

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): JMIR Hum Factors

Journal ID (publisher-id): JMIR Human Factors

Title: JMIR Human Factors

Publisher: JMIR Publications (Toronto, Canada )

ISSN (Electronic): 2292-9495

Publication date Collection: Jan-Mar 2022

Publication date (Electronic): 2 February 2022

Volume: 9

Issue: 1

Electronic Location Identifier: e32112

Affiliations

[1 ] Department of Marketing Faculty of Economics and Business University of Groningen Groningen Netherlands

[2 ] Department of Economics, Econometrics & Finance Faculty of Economics and Business University of Groningen Groningen Netherlands

Author notes

Corresponding Author: Elena Agachi e.agachi@ 123456rug.nl

Author information

Elena Agachi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3887-3774

Tammo H A Bijmolt https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4941-5998

Jochen O Mierau https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9968-8807

Koert van Ittersum https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3584-089X

Article

Publisher ID: v9i1e32112

DOI: 10.2196/32112

PMC ID: 8851331

PubMed ID: 35107433

SO-VID: 24c74e75-03b3-4fbb-b954-d80e82830f61

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Human Factors, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://humanfactors.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

History

Date received : 15 July 2021

Date revision requested : 1 September 2021

Date revision received : 13 October 2021

Date accepted : 5 November 2021

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