Intern Health Study 2024 (IHS)

April 27, 2026 updated by: Srijan Sen, University of Michigan

Intern Health Study: 2024 Cohort Micro-Randomized Trial

The aim of this trial is to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention (delivered through a smartphone) for improving the mood, physical activity, and sleep of medical interns.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Due to their high stress workloads, medical interns suffer from depression at higher rates than the general population. Interns also tend to have lower sleep and decreased physical activity. The goal of this trial is to evaluate the efficacy of a mobile health intervention intending to help improve the mental health of medical interns. The intervention sends mobile phone notifications which aim to help interns improve their mood, maintain physical activity, and obtain adequate sleep during their internship year.

The primary aim of the study is to evaluate how notifications affect participants' weekly mood, as measured through a daily one question mood survey. The second primary aim of the study is to evaluate how notifications affect participants' long-term mental health, as measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire. The first secondary aim is to evaluate how mood notifications affect participants' weekly mood. The second secondary aim is to evaluate how activity notifications affect participants' weekly step count. The third secondary aim is to evaluate how sleep notifications affect participants' weekly sleep duration. In order to better optimize notification delivery, the final aim (exploratory) is to understand moderators of these effects. Moderators of interest are previous week's mood, previous week's step count, previous week's sleep duration, study week, sex, previous history of depression, and baseline neuroticism.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

1047

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Michigan
      • Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, 48109
        • University of Michigan

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Medical intern during the 2024-2025 internship year
  • iPhone or Android phone user
  • Logged into the Intern Health Study mobile app, completed consent, and filled out baseline survey by June 30 prior to the start of intern year

Exclusion Criteria:

  • None

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Within-participant micro-randomization

Each day in the study, with probability .5 for each, a participant is randomized to receive a notification that day or no notification that day.

If a participant is assigned to receive a notification that day, 1 message set will be randomly selected from a pool of 358 core message sets. Each core message set will be comprised of 4 messages containing comparable content, however they will be tailored based on the participant's wearable (steps, sleep) or mood data for the specified time interval (7 days, 30 days, since the start of internship) as follows: 1) no data, 2) low, 3) moderate, or 4) high.
Behavioral: Intern Health Study behavioral change mobile notification
The study's mobile app will be used to deliver push notifications. The notifications appear on the participant's phone lock screen. The notifications include 3 categories: mood notifications, activity notifications, sleep notifications. Mood notifications aim to increase the participant's mood. Activity notifications aim to increase the participant's physical activity. Sleep notifications aim to increase the participant's sleep duration. All notifications are categorized as one of five therapeutic approaches: 1) CBT-Behavioral, 2) CBT-Cognitive, 3) Distanced Self-Talk, 4) Mindfulness, 5) Motivational Interviewing.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Average daily mood
Time Frame: Daily, through study completion at the end of intern year (1 year)
Through the mobile app, participants enter a mood score (scale 1 - 10) every day of the study. 1 corresponds to lowest mood and 10 corresponds to highest mood.
Daily, through study completion at the end of intern year (1 year)
Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)
Time Frame: Quarterly (every 3 months for 1 year)
Prior to the start of the intervention and at quarterly intervals throughout internship year, all participants complete the Patient Health Questionnaire 9. High scores on the PHQ-9 correspond to a larger number of depressive symptoms.
Quarterly (every 3 months for 1 year)
Average daily step count
Time Frame: Daily, through study completion at the end of intern year (1 year)
Participant's daily step counts are recorded through a fitness tracker. High step counts are considered a positive outcome as it indicates more physical activity.
Daily, through study completion at the end of intern year (1 year)
Average nightly sleep duration
Time Frame: Daily, through study completion at the end of intern year (1 year)
Participant's nightly sleep duration (in minutes) is recorded through a fitness tracker. High sleep duration is considered a positive outcome.
Daily, through study completion at the end of intern year (1 year)

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of Michigan

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

July 1, 2024

Primary Completion (Actual)

June 30, 2025

Study Completion (Actual)

June 30, 2025

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

June 13, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 13, 2024

First Posted (Actual)

June 20, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 1, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 27, 2026

Last Verified

April 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • MH-101459-2024

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

YES

IPD Plan Description

De-identified genomic and survey information (baseline survey, plus quarterly survey which contains the PHQ-9) will be shared with the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH).

IPD Sharing Time Frame

Data will be made available 12 months after the end of the trial. It will be made available indefinitely after that date.

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

The data will be shared directly with the NIMH. NIMH will apply their criteria for qualified researchers and analyses.

IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type

  • ICF

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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