Using Behavioural Insights to Improve Effectiveness of Digital Weight Loss Interventions

Key words: obesity, health behaviours, digital health, interdisciplinary research, quantitative skills
Over a quarter of adults in the UK are living with obesity, which significantly increases their risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and several types of cancers. It also underpins substantial multimorbidity. Supporting people to lose weight is important to reduce the burden of obesity-related diseases, for individuals and health services. The recent government obesity plan recognises the need to identify interventions to support successful weight loss at scale in a cost-effective way. Digital interventions are promising but their evidence base is limited. There are also particular challenges in encouraging adherence to digital programmes, especially in some subgroups of the population.
The project will focus on developing and testing new intervention components, aiming to foster sustained participant engagement. The project is in partnership with Second Nature, a provider of a digitally-delivered behavioural weight management programme that is designed to support people to increase their physical activity and create healthy eating patterns, to achieve sustainable weight loss in a real-world environment. The programme gives participants access to evidence-based educational articles, a registered dietitian or nutritionist, tracking technology, and group support via a smartphone application. It is one of the weight management service providers commissioned by NHS England and local commissioning groups.
The DPhil project will have three major components: 1) quantitatively analysing existing data to identify predictors of user engagement and disengagement, 2) conducting and analysing qualitative interviews to understand user experiences, and 3) developing and testing new intervention components in a real-world setting. The project will combine expertise in behavioural science in Oxford and commercial insights from Second Nature to enhance the development of more effective weight loss approaches that can be immediately incorporated into NHS care, thus creating impact on a national scale.