The Move More! Move Often! Program: A Pilot Feasibility Study
Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility of a Fitbit-based physical activity health promotion program targeting sedentary faculty, staff, and students in a university setting. Feasibility was defined by four specific aims: recruitment, participant engagement, acceptability, and physical activity effects. Methods: Single-arm design included 168 participants (6 faculty, 97 staff, and 65 students) at Wake Forest University. The Move More! Move Often! Program lasted eight weeks in duration. Average number of daily steps taken during the first week of the program were considered each participant’s baseline average. Participants were encouraged to increase their average number of daily steps and incentivized at levels of 50%, 75% or 100% increase calculated from their baseline average Program components also included weekly walking groups, weekly email messages, incentives and discounts around campus, weekly step challenges, and a post program evaluation. Results: Recruitment numbers for faculty and staff spots were filled within the first 36 hours of recruitment. Participant engagement in the program was high including the participants wearing and syncing their Fitbit 87% of the time. Acceptability was based primarily on the post program evaluation and the majority of participants (>50%) agreed or strongly agreed that the program and program components were helpful. Faculty and staff significantly increased their number of average daily steps by 1434 steps per day (p=0.04). Students did not have a significant change in steps. Conclusion: The feasibility of this present study, Move More! Move Often!, are promising and indicate that the program was well received, tolerated, and accepted by participants. However, there is still a need for further studies to determine the best ways to engage these populations and implement the intervention.
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