Children must co-design digital health research

Children must co-design digital health research
Editorial
The Lancet Digital Health, 7 April 2023
Open Access
Excerpt
… A multipronged approach is needed to change prevalent risk behaviours in adolescents. Yet few eHealth studies have assessed whether multiple health behaviour change (MHBC) interventions work, even though risk behaviours commonly co-occur, with more than 80% of adolescents engaging in two or more risk behaviours and more than 33% engaging in three or more. In this issue, Katrina Champion and colleagues describe a cluster randomised trial in Australia of more than 6000 11–13-year-olds enrolled in a 6-week school-based MHBC web-based and app-based intervention (Health4Life) designed to modify six chronic disease risk behaviours. The trial showed that the intervention was not effective in modifying adolescent risk behaviours despite improving knowledge about chronic disease risk factors over 24 months. These results are consistent with a previous meta-analysis by the authors, showing that eHealth MHBC interventions were not effective in reducing alcohol use, smoking, or sugar-sweetened beverage intake among school students. But, why do so many of these digital interventions fail?…