The Effects and Patterns among Mobile Health, Social Determinants, and Physical Activity: A Nationally Representative Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Mobile health (mHealth) technologies and applications are becoming more and more accessible. The increased prevalence of wearable and embeddable sensors has opened up new opportunities to collect health data continuously outside of the clinical environment. Meanwhile, wearable devices and smartphone health apps are useful to address the issues of health disparities and inequities. This study aims to identify different characteristics of individuals who use different mHealth technologies (wearable devices and smartphone apps) and explore the effectiveness and patterns of mHealth for impacting physical activities. We found that social determinants are significantly associated with the use of mHealth; mHealth is helping people to exercise more regularly and for a longer time. Smartphone app users are older while wearable device users are younger. Health disparities exist in mHealth use and physical activity level. Social determinants like education and income are associated with mHealth use and physical activity. The integration of passively-tracked patient-generated health data (PGHD) holds promise in increasing physical activities. Physical activity interventions that comprise wearable devices and smartphone apps may be more beneficial, since health goals, data visualization, real-time support and feedback, results interpretation, and group education could be embedded in the integrated "smart system". These findings may be useful for stakeholders like wearable device and smartphone app companies, researchers, health care workers, and public health practitioners, who should work together to design and develop "precision mobile health" products with higher personalized and participatory levels, thus improving the population health.