Summary

Eligibility
for people ages 15-17 (full criteria)
Healthy Volunteers
healthy people welcome
Location
at UCSF
Dates
study started
completion around
Principal Investigator
by Elizabeth Ozer, PhD (ucsf)
Headshot of Elizabeth Ozer
Elizabeth Ozer

Description

Summary

As most adolescents visit a healthcare provider once a year, health behavior change interventions linked to clinic-based health information technologies hold significant promise for improving healthcare quality and subsequent behavioral health outcomes for adolescents (Baird, 2014, Harris, 2017). Recognizing the potential to leverage recent advances in machine learning and interactive narrative environments, the investigators are now well positioned to design health behavior change systems that extend the reach of clinicians to realize significant impacts on behavior change for adolescent preventive health.

The proposed project centers on the design, development, and evaluation of a clinically-integrated health behavior change system for adolescents. CHANGEGRADIENTS will introduce an innovative reinforcement learning-based feedback loop in which adolescent patients interact with personalized behavior change interactive narratives that are dynamically personalized and realized in a rich narrative-centered virtual environment. CHANGEGRADIENTS will iteratively improve its behavior change models using policy gradient methods for Reinforcement Learning (RL) designed to optimize adolescents' achieved behavior change outcomes. This in turn will enable CHANGEGRADIENTS to generate more effective behavior change narratives, which will then lead to further improved behavior change outcomes. With a focus on risky behaviors and an emphasis on alcohol use, adolescents will interact with CHANGEGRADIENTS to develop an experiential understanding of the dynamics and consequences of their alcohol use decisions. The proposed project holds significant transformative potential for (1) producing theoretical and practical advances in how to realize significant impacts on adolescent health behavior change through novel interactive narrative technologies integrated with policy-based reinforcement learning, (2) devising sample-efficient policy gradient methods for RL that produce personalized behavior change experiences by integrating theoretically based models of health behavior change with data-driven models of interactive narrative generation, and (3) promoting new models for integrating personalized health behavior change technologies into clinical care that extend the effective reach of clinicians.

Official Title

Promoting Adolescent Health Behavior Change With Clinically Integrated Sample-Efficient Policy Gradient Methods

Details

Because the majority of adolescent health problems are amenable to behavioral intervention and most adolescents visit a healthcare provider once a year, health behavior change interventions linked to clinic- based health information technologies hold significant promise for improving healthcare quality and subsequent behavioral health outcomes for adolescents. Recognizing the potential to leverage advances in machine learning and virtual narrative environments, the field of health behavior change is now well-positioned to design health behavior change systems that extend the reach of clinicians to realize significant impacts on behavior change for adolescent preventive health.

With a focus on risky behaviors and an emphasis on alcohol use, the project has two specific aims: (1) design, develop, and iteratively refine a policy-based reinforcement learning behavior change system for preventive adolescent health, and (2) investigate the impact of a clinically integrated sample-efficient policy gradient-based behavior change system on adolescent behavior. The project will culminate with an investigation of the behavioral effects of the CHANGEGRADIENTS system using adolescent patients recruited from two outpatient primary care clinics within the UCSF Department of Pediatrics: Mt. Zion Pediatrics and the Adolescent/Young Adult Clinic. It is hypothesized that adolescents who interact with CHANGEGRADIENTS will reduce number of days of alcohol use, reduce binge drinking, and increase self-efficacy to engage in healthy behavior and avoid risky substance use.

It is anticipated that CHANGEGRADIENTS will provide a testbed for a broad range of health behavior change research and serve as the foundation for next-generation personalized preventive healthcare through computationally-enabled behavior change that is designed to be tightly integrated into clinical practice workflow. By taking advantage of the high degree of adaptive interactivity offered by its personalized behavior change environment, CHANGEGRADIENTS holds significant potential for creating compelling interactions that promote self-efficacy and engagement in healthy lifestyle behaviors to prevent cancer through improving cancer-related behaviors and risk factors.

Keywords

Alcohol Drinking, Self Efficacy, Adolescent Behavior, Risk-Taking, Cancer, Alcohol- Prevention/Control, Video games- psychology, ChangeGradients

Eligibility

You can join if…

Open to people ages 15-17

  • Adolescents between the ages of 15 and 17 years of age
  • Report current alcohol use
  • Presenting for a well-visit at UCSF Pediatric primary care clinics (the Mt. Zion Pediatric Primary Care Practices at UCSF and The Adolescent/Young Adult Clinic at UCSF)

You CAN'T join if...

  • Non-English speakers

Location

  • University of California San Francisco Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine Clinic accepting new patients
    San Francisco California 94107 United States

Lead Scientist at University of California Health

  • Elizabeth Ozer, PhD (ucsf)
    Elizabeth Ozer is Professor of Pediatrics & Associate Vice Provost, Faculty Equity, Office of Diversity and Outreach, at the University of California, SF (UCSF). She also serves as Director of Fellows Research Training in Adolescent & Young Adult Medicine. Dr. Ozer is a psychologist whose research has focused primarily on the health of adolescents, young adults, and women.

Details

Status
accepting new patients
Start Date
Completion Date
(estimated)
Sponsor
University of California, San Francisco
ID
NCT04110756
Study Type
Interventional
Participants
Expecting 200 study participants
Last Updated