Promoting Flu Vaccination Through a Mobile Wellness Program

The investigators design a 6-week messaging campaign aimed at promoting flu vaccination among fully insured members of a national payer that participate in a wellness program offered by the insurer through a mobile app. Outcomes measured will include uptake in flu vaccination rate as measured by the insurer and engagement with the campaign through the app.

The goal of the research is to assess the effectiveness of pervasive computing messaging in promoting preventative care treatments such as flu shots. An additional goal is that of quantifying the importance of emphasizing incentives to increase efficacy of the messages.

Study Overview

• Status: Unknown
• Conditions: Not Condition-specific
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: In-app and push notification mobile messages

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Anticipated): 77983
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • Santa Barbara, California, United States, 93101
      • Evidation Health

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 65 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• belongs to fully insured population
• continuous health coverage between January 1, 2015 and June 1, 2016
• has downloaded and installed the wellness platform app

Exclusion Criteria:

• has declined the messaging from the platform

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

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

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Salient; Messages in the salient arm highlight the number of incentives (points) received by getting a flu shot and recording it through the wellness program app. Additionally, messages mention that flu shots can be received at the pharmacy while picking up an Rx. Users in the arm are matched up with a second user from the same arm, randomly. For each pair, the messages are sent to both users at the same time within the specified time window. Such time is picked to be the day in which the first user is most likely to pick up an Rx from a pharmacy.	Behavioral: In-app and push notification mobile messages; Short messages (100-250 characters) are to be delivered to a mobile app both by push notification (i.e., appearing on the phone dashboard like a text message if the user has allowed notifications from the app) and in-app messages (visible in the news feed of the wellness program app when the app is opened). Messages contain a short title (30 characters) and 2-3 lines of text in the body (30 characters each).
Active Comparator: NonSalient; Messages in the non-salient arm highlight the benefits of getting vaccinated against flu, but make no mention of incentives received for getting vaccinated. Incentives would still be earned through the wellness program if the vaccination is recorded. Messages mention that flu shots can be received at the pharmacy while picking up an Rx. Users in the arm are matched up with a second user from the same arm, randomly. For each pair, the messages are sent to both users at the same time within the specified time window. Such time is picked to be the day in which the first user is most likely to pick up an Rx from a pharmacy	Behavioral: In-app and push notification mobile messages; Short messages (100-250 characters) are to be delivered to a mobile app both by push notification (i.e., appearing on the phone dashboard like a text message if the user has allowed notifications from the app) and in-app messages (visible in the news feed of the wellness program app when the app is opened). Messages contain a short title (30 characters) and 2-3 lines of text in the body (30 characters each).
No Intervention: Control; Users in this group will not receive any message promoting flu vaccination. Incentives would still be earned through the wellness program if the vaccination is recorded.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Increase in vaccination rate vs control	Increase in vaccination rate of anyone messaged relative to the control condition	Up to 1 week after the end of each of the three batches of the intervention (Oct 1/15/28 2016)
Increase in vaccination rate of salient vs non-salient	Increase in vaccination rate of those who received salient incentives messages vs those who received generic messages	Up to 1 week after the end of each of the three batches of the intervention (Oct 1/15/28 2016)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Decrease in medically attended flu events of messaged vs control	Decrease in observed flu rate for messaged users	Up to 1 week after the end of each of the three batches of the intervention (Oct 1/15/28 2016)
Increase in reporting of flu vaccination through wellness app of salient vs non-salient	Increase in reporting vaccination through the wellness program app following messages	Up to 1 week after the end of each of the three batches of the intervention (Oct 1/15/28 2016)
Increase in vaccination rate for users messaged within 2 days before of an expected rx pick-up.	Increase in vaccination rate of users messaged within 2 days before an expected Rx pick up from a pharmacy relative to their paired partners.	Up to 1 week after the end of each of the three batches of the intervention (Oct 1/15/28 2016)
Increase in message open rate of Salient vs Non-salient arm	Increase in open rate of sent messages through the wellness program app of salient vs non salient arm	Up to 1 week after the end of each of the three batches of the intervention (Oct 1/15/28 2016)

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Evidation Health
• Collaborators: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; Army Research Office (ARO)

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Lee WN, Stuck D, Konty K, Rivers C, Brown CR, Zbikowski SM, Foschini L. Large-scale influenza vaccination promotion on a mobile app platform: A randomized controlled trial. Vaccine. 2020 Apr 16;38(18):3508-3514. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.11.053. Epub 2019 Nov 29.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: September 1, 2016
• Primary Completion (Anticipated): December 1, 2016
• Study Completion (Anticipated): June 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: September 9, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 16, 2016
• First Posted (Estimate): September 21, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): October 21, 2016
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 20, 2016
• Last Verified: October 1, 2016

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: EH-002

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: Undecided
• IPD Plan Description: Aggregated outcome data may be shared.