Effect of a Multicomponent mHealth Intervention on the Composition of Diet in a Population with Overweight and Obesity—Randomized Clinical Trial EVIDENT 3

A balanced diet can help in the prevention of chronic diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an mHealth intervention on the distribution of macronutrients and the intake of food groups. A total of 650 participants were included in this multi-center, clinical, randomized, controlled trial (Evident 3 study). All participants were given brief advice about diet and exercise. The intervention group received, in addition, an app (Evident 3) for the self-recording of their diet and an activity tracker wristband for 3 months. Follow-up visits were performed at 3 and 12 months to collect the diet composition using the Food Frequency Questionnaire. There were decreases in the intake of total calories, fat, protein and carbohydrates in both groups throughout the study, without significant differences between them. The intervention group reduced the intake of cholesterol (−30.8; 95% CI −59.9, −1.7) and full-fat dairies (−23.3; 95% CI −42.8, −3.8) and increased the intake of wholemeal bread (3.3; 95% CI −6.7, 13.3) and whole-grain cereals (3.4; 95% CI −6.8, 13.7) with respect to the control group. No differences were found in the rest of the nutritional parameters. The brief advice is useful to promote a healthier diet, and the app can be a support tool to obtain changes in relevant foods, such as integral foods, and the intake of cholesterol. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov with identifier NCT03175614.

Editorial: Geoscience communication – planning to make it publishable

If you are a geoscientist doing work to achieve impact outside academia or engaging different audiences with the geosciences, are you planning to make this publishable? If so, then plan. Such investigations into how people (academics, practitioners, other publics) respond to geoscience can use pragmatic, simple research methodologies accessible to the non-specialist or be more complex. To employ a medical analogy, first aid is useful and the best option in some scenarios, but calling a medic (i.e. a collaborator with experience of geoscience communication or relevant research methods) provides the contextual knowledge to identify a condition and opens up a diverse, more powerful range of treatment options. Here, we expand upon the brief advice in the first editorial of Geoscience Communication (Illingworth et al., 2018), illustrating what constitutes robust and publishable work in this context, elucidating its key elements. Our aim is to help geoscience communicators plan a route to publication and to illustrate how good engagement work that is already being done might be developed into publishable research.

El uso de una página web como alternativa para el tratamiento del abuso de alcohol en adolescentes: un estudio de caso único

Introduction: the usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to treat psychological problems such as addictions, is a recent issue that has allowed the recognition that the use of this type of tools is effective towards the problem they claim to solve, in a similar way as traditional therapy treatments do. Objective: to evaluate the efficacy of the Brief Intervention Program for Adolescents who Abuse Drugs (PIBA) and the Brief Advice in the Web Page modality regarding the barriers in the implementation of drug abuse treatments by the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: we started from a A-B-A single-case design with high school adolescent students who reported abusive use and associated consequences. The study consisted of four stages 1) evaluation, 2) admission, 3) PIBA or Brief Advice and 4) follow-up. Results: the results obtained showed a decrease in the pattern of alcohol consumption and an increase in self-efficacy to control consumption in various risk situations. Discussion and conclusions: the program provided the necessary tools for adolescents to maintain their consumption goal.