Virtual Reality to Combat Weight-Based Implicit Bias: BWH Pilot Study (BWH-VR-1)

December 4, 2025 updated by: Daniel Palazuelos, Brigham and Women's Hospital

The Use of Virtual Reality to Combat Weight-Based Implicit Bias Among Physicians in Training at Brigham and Women's Hospital: A Pilot Study

The goal of this pilot implementation study is to evaluate the impact of a virtual reality (VR) intervention on implicit bias for resident physicians. The main question it aims to answer are:

Does watching VR experience of two clinical encounters reduce implicit bias association test scores? Is the VR experience an acceptable intervention tool for reducing implicit bias?

Researchers will compare weight-based VR experiences consisting of two observed clinical encounters to a neutral education VR encounter to see if our intervention significantly impacts implicit bias association scores.

Participants will be asked

  1. Complete Implicit Association test for weight-based bias pre-intervention and post-intervention (immediately, at one week, and one month after the intervention) to assess their implicit bias
  2. Watch either experimental clinical encounter videos or neutral education video using a VR headset
  3. Participants will also complete an abbreviated IAT related to views on compliance

Study Overview

Status

Enrolling by invitation

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

52

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
    • Massachusetts
      • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02115
        • Brigham and Women's Hospital

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:

  • Resident physicians associated with Brigham and Women's Hospital
  • Resident physicians providing informed consent to participate

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: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Clinical Encounters VR Videos
Behavioral: 360 Video on a Virtual Reality Headset
Two 360- videos watched via a VR headset where the study subject will witness a positive physician encounter with a compliant obese patient and a negative encounter with a non-compliant non-obese patient
Other: Control Neutral VR Video
Behavioral: 360-Control Video
A neutral education video from the New England Journal of Medicine watched in a 360-theatre setting via a VR headset

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Implicit Association Test
Time Frame: From enrollment to one-month post-intervention
Participants in both experimental and control arms will take four implicit association tests: one pre-VR to assess baseline, immediately post-VR, one-week, and one-month. Impact of VR experimental experience will be assessed for significant changes in IAT scores between the pre-VR test and the post-VR tests.
From enrollment to one-month post-intervention

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Resident Impression of Virtual Reality Implicit Bias Project
Time Frame: One-month post-VR
The acceptability of the use of virtual reality for implicit bias studies will be surveyed
One-month post-VR

Collaborators and Investigators

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

Sponsor

Brigham and Women's Hospital

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.

General Publications

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)

November 19, 2024

Primary Completion (Estimated)

November 30, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 31, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

December 4, 2025

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 4, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

December 16, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

December 16, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 4, 2025

Last Verified

December 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2022P001287

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

UNDECIDED

IPD Plan Description

IPD may not be shared since IAT scores of residents may be considered private information that a resident physician may not want shared.

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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