Reaching Racial/Ethnic Minority Communities to Support Healthy Lifestyle Change: Virtual World Training for Community Health Workers

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The burden of diabetes is greater for racial/ethnic minorities, including African Americans. Overweight and obesity are risk factors for the development of diabetes and are also more prevalent in racial/ethnic minorities. The Diabetes Prevention Program and subsequent translation studies demonstrated the efficacy of a lifestyle intervention on reducing weight and risk of type 2 diabetes. Increasing evidence supports efforts to engage CHWs to help extend our reach to reduce obesity and diabetes risk in underserved communities. Research is needed to identify standard, effective, and scalable CHW training models to equip them to help extend our reach in racial/ethnic minority communities, especially at-risk African Americans. Internet-based immersive 3- dimensional (3-D) virtual world environments offer the opportunity to reach populations with standardized and tailored approaches that can overcome common barriers to participation and allow for engaging and experiential educational opportunities. Building on our prior work and experience, we will tailor/adapt, implement, and evaluate an internet-based 3-D virtual world model to remotely deliver a CHW training program (CDC “Road to Health”; RTH) to support CHWs' efforts to educate at-risk African American communities about lifestyle changes to reduce obesity and diabetes risk. We will use a sequential mixed-methods design to address these specific aims: Aim 1. Use community-based participatory research methods to guide the overall study and inform tailoring and adaptation of our virtual world model to deliver the CHW training program; Aim 2. Conduct a randomized pilot study (N=40 CHWs) to compare change in primary outcomes (0, 12 weeks) after the in-person versus virtual world delivery of the training program. Participants will be experienced African American female CHWs who share characteristics of the at-risk population they serve. Primary CHW outcomes include program content knowledge and delivery skill, self-efficacy, adherence, and change in lifestyle behaviors; and Aim 3. Conduct summative focus groups to refine the CHW virtual world training program and study methodology to guide subsequent development of an RO1. If our virtual world CHW training model shows promise in this study and subsequent effectiveness in an RCT, it could be tailored/adapted for diverse groups and scaled for broad remote dissemination.