Behavioral Health Informatics Capacity-Building in China

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This FIRCA proposal has the goal of establishing behavioral informatics research laboratories and research capacity in China. The long range goal is to spread behavioral informatics research capacity throughout China and in other developing countries. The first step in this process will be to establish a behavioral informatics research laboratory in Hong Kong which will be located in the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), directed by Dr. Joseph Lau. The second step is to develop a collaborative behavioral informatics research project at CUHK which will be conducted in Shenzhen, China in collaboration with Dr. Ji Peng, Chief of the Department of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control in the Shenzhen Municipal Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control in Shenzhen, China. For this project, a Chinese version of an effective NIH-funded automated, telephone-based physical activity (PA) promotion program will be developed. This will entail review of the U.S. program by Drs. Lau and Peng, and their staffs and the conduct of a small ethnographic study in Shenzhen, to better understand the context and culture of telephone use, physical activity behavior, and health behavior change programs among the target population of sedentary adults. The U.S. program will then be modified in Dr. Lau's laboratory, pretested in Shenzhen, and evaluated in a two-arm randomized clinical trial of 120 sedentary adults in the Shenzhen metropolitan area under the direction of Drs. Peng and Lau. Subjects will be randomly assigned to weekly automated telephone counseling or to a control condition. We hypothesize that at the end of a 6 month intervention period, the automated counseling group compared to the control group will (1) increase the participants' level of PA, (2) achieve recommended levels of PA, and (3) increase their readiness to engage in regular PA. We will explore whether outcome effects of the intervention are mediated through improvement in self-efficacy for PA. The proposed project is significant from both research and public health perspective. At present, there is no research laboratory in China in the discipline of behavioral informatics which is the application of computer and telecommunications technologies to address human behavioral factors that are associated with the development of disease and optimal patient self-care. The long-term objective of this FIRCA program is to develop self-sustaining research laboratories in behavioral informatics in major centers in mainland China. This FIRCA proposal will support the first steps in this process. The ultimate public health goal of the project is to apply the results of research performed in the behavioral informatics laboratories in China to the healthcare system to decrease the prevalence of chronic disease and improve its control in both an effective and cost savings manner. Given the enormous healthcare needs of China and other countries in the developing world, such a practical outcome would be of potentially great significance. This project will result in the establishment of research capacity in China to develop, evaluate and disseminate an automated, low cost, culturally sensitive, easily accessible and effective program to promote healthy behavior in the population (e.g., active lifestyle, healthy eating, and smoking cessation). Should these programs be deployed in China, they would have the capacity to decrease the prevalence of many common chronic diseases and improve their control in the population.