Can Personal Technology Stop the Obesity Epidemic?

So much of our information from and interaction with the world is now mediated by computers, cell phones and tablets that health experts have been practically running themselves ragged trying to find ways to use these conduits to help people make healthier choices.

Great success stories have come out of parts of the developing world, where cell phones have been used to improve maternal and infant care and help people adhere to medication guidelines. But in the U.S., attempts using mobile and online technology to tackle basic health problems, such as obesity, have largely been underwhelming, especially among the tech-savvy younger set.

Researchers at the Obesity Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting in San Antonio, Texas., presented some of their own work on these efforts on September 23 and discussed why so many of these programs have so far failed to take hold.

With teenagers, and, increasingly, younger children, in near-constant text message contact with their friends, many researchers have figured this mode of communication might be an effective way to reach those who are overweight and obese in age groups with health-related texts. And as Susan Woolford of the University of Michigan pointed out, as she showed a video of a dance flash mob, we know that cell phone messages “can get them to come out and dance, but can you get them to change their weight-related behavior?”

She and her colleagues decided to find out. They enrolled 20 obese adolescents and sent them health-related text messages over three months. Although the kids generally accepted the program, it was unclear just how much the messages (such as reminders to drink enough water or suggestions for healthy meals) were put into practice. One of the major complaints in follow-up interviews was that the messages were flat. The kids said they “sounded like an English person from the 1950s,” Woolford noted.

Enter Zamzee. At the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine, Steve Cole and his team have moved in an entirely different direction. They are working on an interactive health platform aimed to increase physical activity in adolescents: . Kids begin by carrying around a Zamzee, a small device that contains accelerometers to detect movement and a USB plug to upload the data into a computer. But that is only the key to unlock the whole Zamzee program. When the Zamzee is plugged in, it launches an online portal that kids can use to view their track their progress.

The program was tested in a six-month randomized controlled trial for 448 subjects, ages 11 to 14. All of them had the Zamzee stick, although the control half only got general, upbeat feedback about their activity levels from the online service. The experimental half were allowed into the full Zamzee interactive experience, which is designed to look like a social-gaming platform, with different modules that show individual activity levels, goals, rewards, and opportunities to interact with other users.