The specialists and subspecialists in the Lifestyle Lab strive to empower individuals to live healthier lives by studying the effects of lifestyle factors on health and developing innovative approaches to health promotion. The motivation for our work lies in that 30 to 50% of all cancer cases and deaths are estimated to be preventable through healthy lifestyles and avoiding harmful exposures (environmental pollution, occupational carcinogens, and long-term infections). The work at the Lifestyle Lab adds to the scientific literature on preventing and surviving cancer through physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep, weight management, and diet.
Mission & Goals
At the OSUCCC – James, the Lifestyle Lab team’s mission is to empower individuals to engage in healthy behaviors within their means, to improve their health and well-being. The four goals of the Lifestyle Lab are:
- To study the impact of health behaviors and risk factors on health outcomes related to cancer prevention and control.
- To develop innovative health promotion interventions to prevent disease, improve quality of life, and reduce health disparities in cancer prevention and control.
- To evaluate intervention efficacy/effectiveness, mechanisms of change, and identify active intervention ingredients.
- To disseminate health promotion interventions across multiple cancer sites and specific populations (e.g., minorities and underserved populations).
How We Do It
The scientists in the Lifestyle Lab study lifestyle behaviors such as physical activity, sedentary behavior, weight management, and sleep to help people make healthy choices in their daily lives to reduce the risk of cancer and benefit survivors. While people’s choices are influenced by their knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, the members of the Lifestyle Lab recognize that simply informing people of lifestyle factors that cause or protect against cancer and their adherence to recommendations is not enough to bring about substantial and sustained changes.
To better understand the social norms and wider upstream factors (social, economic, physical, or social environment), The Lifestyle Lab conducts observational and experimental studies to advance the science of health behavior and health promotion. Observational studies (e.g., cross-sectional, prospective cohort, etc.) help us better understand the role of upstream factors on the uptake of health behaviors and the impact of those behaviors on mental, emotional, and physical health. Then what we learn in observational studies informs health interventions. Experimental studies involve developing and evaluating innovative health interventions to empower individuals to uptake health behaviors. At the Lifestyle Lab, we employ different approaches to understand better what people who have already experienced cancer might do to improve their lives and to identify factors that account for variability in risk and the response to treatment. We describe these approaches below:
1. Commercial- and Research Grade Lifestyle Monitoring
We use mobile health technologies to improve our understanding of lifestyle behaviors such as physical activity and sedentary behavior where they live, work, and play. Compared to traditional methods (e.g., cross-sectional, retrospective, and summary), research-grade technology (e.g., ActivPAL, Actigraph) can often help us understand health behaviors more accurately and reliably. On the other hand, we can also use commercial-grade technology (e.g., Fitbit, Withings, Garmin) as a tool for behavior change. For example, a health coach can use the information obtained through a Fitbit tracker to help guide a counseling session with a research participant.
2. Ecological Momentary Assessments
Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) involve collecting in real-time self-reports of behaviors, contextual influences, emotional states, symptoms (e.g., fatigue), beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions in naturalistic settings. The use of EMA in health behavior and health promotion research is growing rapidly because this time-intensive approach can provide novel insights that are difficult to capture with traditional cross-sectional, retrospective, and summary methods. For example, we’ve used this approach to examine how nurses experience fatigue throughout their shifts, where we learned that nurses working 12-hour night shifts have a significantly greater rise in their work fatigue. When we combined EMA with accelerometry, we found that more walking during the day shift was associated with an increased rise in fatigue, while it mitigated the rise in fatigue during night shifts.
3. Design Methods
Engagement of participants in clinical research studies is a goal for investigators, as engagement can influence the effectiveness of the intervention, especially for studies that require long-term or frequent involvement of participants. Health platforms (e.g., web-based, app-based, etc.) used to deliver health interventions can have design flaws that hinder participant engagement, thus limiting intervention effectiveness. These platforms should be user-friendly while also effectively delivering active intervention components. Design methodologies like human-centered and participatory designs can help us create empathic solutions to health-related problems. For example, in human-centered design, designers gain empathy with the users for whom they are designing; this process inspires and guides the designer to create products that better fit the user's needs. Directly involving study participants in evaluating the effectiveness and usability of electronic tools may promote wider adoption, maintain involvement, and increase user satisfaction with the technology.
