Enhanced Home-Based Exercise Therapy for Peripheral Arterial Disease through Mobile Health and Remote Monitoring

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An estimated 8.5 million Americans (or 7% of US adults) and nearly 10% of veterans are estimated to have peripheral arterial disease (PAD). Significantly debilitating and negatively impacting quality of life, the primary symptom of PAD is claudication (reproducible leg pain with ambulation) that leads to impaired mobility, loss of functional independence, and a heightened risk for amputation. Veterans are at an increased risk of developing symptomatic PAD due to their disproportionately high rates of PAD risk factors such as diabetes, smoking, and hypertension, the most prominent PAD risk factors. Supervised exercise therapy is proven to decrease claudication and enhance mobility in PAD; however, fewer than 25% of eligible patients enroll. Participation in this facility-based program requires travel to a rehabilitation center 3 times per week for 12-weeks, which can be burdensome and costly for Veterans, many of whom live in rural areas and on fixed incomes. There is, therefore, a need to develop a convenient and effective alternative exercise rehabilitation program for Veterans with PAD, particularly in light of safety considerations now associated with this population’s travel to group facilities in the current COVID pandemic. A promising approach to increase access to exercise rehabilitation for PAD is remote, home-based exercise therapy (HBET). Our group has successfully delivered a smartphone-enabled HBET program to Veterans with coronary artery disease with a 3-fold increase in participation and high satisfaction (80%). To this end, we are committed to utilizing technology innovations to implement HBET for Veterans with PAD successfully. HBET programs combine self-led walking exercises with health coaching and exercise tracking with a wearable activity monitor. Adapting HBET to PAD is difficult, however, due to the added complexity of an exercise prescription that requires the patient to walk until they experience near-maximal leg pain. Even with active coaching, successfully implementing HBET for PAD with long-term adherence has been difficult in the past. Our goal, therefore, is to leverage newer mobile health (mHealth) tools to adapt HBET for PAD. We propose to test our technology-enhanced approach for HBET by partnering with a successful VA lifestyle program, MOVE!, which has demonstrated success in achieving sustained weight loss and reduced diabetes onset through lifestyle modification. As increased physical activity is a core element of MOVE!, participation may help increase adherence with HBET for PAD. Our newly proposed program, Smart MOVE!, will be a multi-component program featuring a tailored version of MOVE! and a novel mHealth device called the LifeQ to improve convenience, access, and adherence to HBET for PAD. Aim 1 (Years 1-2): Identify barriers and facilitators to MOVE! participation among Veterans with PAD. Aim 2 (Years 1-2): Evaluate the feasibility of the LifeQ device to monitor exercise during HBET Aim 3 (Years 2-5): Determine the feasibility of proceeding with Smart MOVE! through a pilot randomized trial. As a VA physician actively treating Veterans with PAD, I have seen first-hand the challenges they face in accessing guideline-directed treatments such as supervised exercise. This study will lay the groundwork and provide evidence to proceed with Smart MOVE!, a much-needed patient-centered exercise rehabilitation program for PAD. Additionally, the proposed training plan will support my progress towards becoming an independent VA rehabilitation clinician-scientist focused on improving care quality and treatment outcomes for Veterans with PAD.