Promoting Employee Health Through The Worksite Food Environment (ChooseWell 365)

This project tests a scalable and sustainable approach to weight gain prevention in a population of employees by using the worksite environment to deliver personalized feedback about worksite food purchases, daily calorie goals, social norms for healthy eating, and financial incentives for healthy food purchases. In the future, similar strategies could be adopted by other worksites, institutions, and food retailers and could contribute to the long-term environmental and social changes needed to reverse the obesity epidemic in the United States and worldwide.

The overall objective of ancillary studies added on to this project is to examine the psychological traits, cognitive skills, and genes that may influence the impact of the behavioral intervention to promote healthy diet and weight among employees at a large hospital worksite.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Weight; Food Choice; Nutrition Intake
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Personalized nutrition feedback

Detailed Description

Adults in the United States gain an average of 1-2 pounds a year. Interventions to prevent weight gain at the population level are needed to reverse the rising prevalence of obesity. Although individual-level interventions can result in large weight changes among small groups of individuals, achieving changes in the population will require long-term strategies that create healthier food environments, establish new social norms, and improve motivation and skills for healthy lifestyle behaviors. The worksite is ideal for interventions to address weight and lifestyle behaviors because a majority of adults are employed, and provisions in the Affordable Care Act encourage worksite wellness. Our research team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has demonstrated that behavioral economics strategies, including traffic-light labels, choice architecture, social norms, and financial incentives, improve employees' healthy food choices. The proposed project will address the critical next phase of this research to determine if a worksite intervention delivered through the food environment can prevent weight gain and reduce cardiovascular risk of employees. This project builds on the established traffic-light labeling system at MGH and tests an intervention that aims to increase nutrition knowledge, motivate change in lifestyle behaviors, and promote socially normative behavior for healthier lifestyles among employees. The intervention will be integrated into the flow of the work day, thus lowering burden to employees and the employer. Study Design: In a randomized controlled trial, 600 MGH employees will be assigned to: 1) an intervention arm with automated, personalized feedback about (a) worksite food purchases and calorie and physical activity goals (weekly emails) and (b) social norm feedback plus small financial incentives for healthy food purchases (monthly letters) or 2) a control arm (standardized monthly letters). Study outcomes will be assessed at 1 year (end of intervention) and 2 year follow-up. The primary outcome is change in weight at 1 year. Secondary outcomes are cardiovascular risk factors, worksite food purchases, and dietary intake (as measured by the Healthy Eating Index). A novel exploratory outcome will be healthy food purchases of co-workers who are socially connected to study subjects. Aim 1 is to determine if employees assigned to the intervention have less weight gain and lower cardiovascular risk factors than the control group at 1 year and 2-year follow-up. Aim 2 is to determine if employees assigned to the intervention group make healthier food choices than the control group at 1 year and 2-year follow-up. Exploratory Aim 3 is to determine if employees socially connected to the intervention group make healthier worksite food choices over 1 year than employees connected to the control group. Implications: This innovative strategy utilizing personalized feedback, social norms, and financial incentives will provide a scalable and sustainable model that could be adopted in other worksite, institutional, and retail settings to prevent obesity at the population level.

The overall objective of the ancillary studies added on to this project is to examine the psychological traits, cognitive skills, and genes that may influence the impact of a behaviorally-informed intervention on dietary choices, weight, and other objective health indicators. This research will expand on the randomized trial by examining psychological traits (impulsivity, self-control, social acceptance), cognitive skills (numeracy, health literacy), and genes (97 known BMI loci) that are associated with obesity and poor health and are specifically targeted by the intervention. We will use validated measures to assess traits and skills and well-established methods for genotyping and calculating genetic risk scores. Aim 1 will determine if psychological traits moderate the behavioral intervention effects on diet and weight. Aim 2 will determine if cognitive skills moderate the behavioral intervention effects on diet and weight. Aim 3 will determine if genetic risk for obesity moderates the intervention effect on weight. In secondary analyses, potential mediators of diet and weight outcomes, including dietary intent, self-efficacy, reward sensitivity, perceived norms, and perceived stress, will be assessed. Implications: Results of this research will l will inform the future design and implementation of more effective, tailored, and sustainable population approaches for obesity prevention.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 602
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Massachusetts
    • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02114
      • Massachusetts General Hospital

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 21 years to 75 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Employee at Massachusetts General Hospital; uses hospital cafeterias at least 4 times a week and willing to pay for purchases with employee debit card.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Planning to leave employment at MGH in the next year; currently pregnant; currently participating in the MGH employee wellness program Be Fit

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Personalized feedback; Emails and letters providing personalized nutrition feedback about food choices and health, social norms, and financial incentives for healthy food choices	Behavioral: Personalized nutrition feedback; Automated personalized nutrition feedback about cafeteria food purchases (weekly); social norms and small financial incentives to promote healthy purchases (monthly)
No Intervention: Control; Monthly letters with general nutrition information

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Weight Change	Change in weight from baseline to 12 months	12 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Weight Change	Change in weight from baseline to 24 months	24 months
Change in Blood Pressure	Change from baseline in mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP).	12 and 24 months
Change in Total Cholesterol	Change from baseline in mean serum total cholesterol.	12 and 24 months
Change in LDL Cholesterol	Change from baseline in mean serum LDL.	12 and 24 months
Change in Triglycerides	Change in mean serum triglycerides.	12 and 24 months
Change in HDL Cholesterol	Change in mean serum HDL.	12 and 24 months
Change in Hemoglobin A1C	Change in mean serum hemoglobin A1c.	12 and 24 months
Change in Green-labeled (Healthy) Food Purchases	Change in cafeteria food purchases labeled green.	12 and 24 months
Change in Red-labeled (Unhealthy) Food Purchases	Change in cafeteria food purchases labeled red.	12 and 24 months
Change in Healthy Purchasing Score	Change in overall score of the healthfulness of foods purchased, weighting the proportion of red, yellow, and green foods. To calculate the score, red foods are weighted 0, yellow are weighted 0.5, and green foods are weighted 1.0. Weighted scores are multiplied x 100, and the range is from 0 (least healthy cafeteria purchases, i.e. all red) to 100 (healthiest cafeteria purchases, i.e. all green).	12 and 24 months
Change in Healthy Eating Index Score-15	Change in Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scores. Healthy Eating Index Score is a measure of overall dietary quality that was calculated from two 24-hour dietary recalls. The range is from 0 (lowest diet quality) to 100 (highest diet quality) points.	12 and 24 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Massachusetts General Hospital
• Collaborators: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK); National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Thorndike AN, McCurley JL, Gelsomin ED, Anderson E, Chang Y, Porneala B, Johnson C, Rimm EB, Levy DE. Automated Behavioral Workplace Intervention to Prevent Weight Gain and Improve Diet: The ChooseWell 365 Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Jun 1;4(6):e2112528. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.12528.
• Dashti HS, Hivert MF, Levy DE, McCurley JL, Saxena R, Thorndike AN. Polygenic risk score for obesity and the quality, quantity, and timing of workplace food purchases: A secondary analysis from the ChooseWell 365 randomized trial. PLoS Med. 2020 Jul 21;17(7):e1003219. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003219. eCollection 2020 Jul.
• Feig EH, Levy DE, McCurley JL, Rimm EB, Anderson EM, Gelsomin ED, Thorndike AN. Association of work-related and leisure-time physical activity with workplace food purchases, dietary quality, and health of hospital employees. BMC Public Health. 2019 Nov 27;19(1):1583. doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-7944-1.
• Levy DE, Gelsomin ED, Rimm EB, Pachucki M, Sanford J, Anderson E, Johnson C, Schutzberg R, Thorndike AN. Design of ChooseWell 365: Randomized controlled trial of an automated, personalized worksite intervention to promote healthy food choices and prevent weight gain. Contemp Clin Trials. 2018 Dec;75:78-86. doi: 10.1016/j.cct.2018.11.004. Epub 2018 Nov 7.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 1, 2016
• Primary Completion (Actual): March 1, 2020
• Study Completion (Actual): March 15, 2020

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: January 18, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 18, 2016
• First Posted (Estimate): January 21, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): December 1, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 29, 2021
• Last Verified: November 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Nutrition; Prevention; Weight; Feedback; Behavior change; Food choice; Behavioral economics; Incentives
• Other Study ID Numbers: 5R01HL125486 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract); R01DK114735 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)