Health Behavior Management

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Aging Heart Zurich

The main objective of the cohort study "Aging Heart Zurich" is to build the first comprehensive characterisation of an age group of people over 80 with cardiovascular diseases. In addition to a complete somatic characterisation, including state-of-the-art data extraction from a hospital information system and the creation of a biobank, the quality of life, depression, anxiety, health behaviors, as well as multiple psychosocial aspects that might serve as protective and risk factors are being assessed.

Project status: Ongoing
Contact: Prof. Dr. Urte Scholz and Dr. Walter Bierbauer

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Coronary heart diseases, adjustment disorder, medication adherence and physical activity – CAMP study

Coronary heart disease is responsible for 13% of all global deaths. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) plays an important role in secondary prevention after acute coronary syndromes. This observational study investigates how patients leaving CR manage their everyday life. How successful are the initiated health behaviors (i.e., physical activity, medication adherence) shown in everyday life and do the patients meet the recommended behavioral changes? By applying intensive longitudinal methods, this study allows an in-depth insight into the last seven days of CR and the following 21 days after CR. Data collection is supplemented by a six month, and 12-month follow-up, in order to allow an investigation of the maintenance of the recommendd health behaviors.

Project status: data collection completed, analysing data and publishing ongoing
Contact: Dr. Walter Bierbauer

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ARMin – Robot-assisted stroke therapy

Stroke patients often face reduced mobility and loss of upper extremity function. Robot-assisted therapy can help patients to improve functioning in paretic arms. This study investigates how stroke patients adhere to at-home treatment recommendations, e.g., using both arms for activities of daily living. In cumulative N-of-1 trials adopting an A-B-A-B experimental design, patients get both solo robot-assisted therapy (A) and dyadic robot-assisted therapy (B). At-home arm activity is measured by wrist-worn accelerometry and related motivational, volitional, and social variables are gathered in self-reports across five weeks on a daily basis.

Project status: data collection completed, analysing data and publishing ongoing
Contact: Dr. Walter Bierbauer

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Dyadic Management of Diabetes (DyMand)

Diabetes mellitus Type II (T2DM) is a common chronic disease. To manage blood glucose levels, patients need to follow medical recommendations for healthy eating, physical activity, and show medication adherence in their everyday life. Illness management is often shared with romantic partners and involves social support and common dyadic coping. Therefore, a novel ambulatory assessment application for the open-source behavioral intervention platform MobileCoach (AAMC) that utilizes objective sensor data in combination with self-reports in couples’ everyday life was developed. The DyMand study has an intensive longitudinal design with two phases of data collection: A naturalistic observation of couples’ everyday conversations in combination with experience sampling and an observational study in the lab where couples discuss topics related to their diabetes management. Participants are romantic couples with one partner being diagnosed with T2DM.

Project status: ongoing
Contact: Prof. Dr. Urte Scholz and Dr. Theresa Pauly

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Medication adherence of persons with multiple chronic diseases (multimorbidity)

Chronic conditions often require the intake of multiple medications, which can be challenging to adhere to. In this study, 84 patients with multimorbidity and multiple-medication regimens completed three panel questionnaires, spaced one month apart. A randomly assigned subsample additionally completed a 30-day daily diary. In contrast to published literature, we found a very high medication adherence (taking medication as recommended) rate. Self-report, as well as objective measurement (electronic pillbox) of medication adherence, showed that, on average, more than 90% of medications were taken as recommended. This project also investigated personal, social, and situational factors related to medication adherence in daily life by applying intensive longitudinal methods.

Project status: completed in 2016
Contact: Dr. Walter Bierbauer