JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

‘ACTivate your Wellbeing’ is a digital health and wellbeing programme designed to support and encourage positive lifestyle behaviour change. The website includes five lifestyle behaviour change modules and a 12-week wellbeing intervention based on acceptance and commitment therapy. It was timely to adapt the resource for a new audience in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Student and young person’s mental health needs have increased significantly, and lifestyle behaviours play a critical role in both mental and physical health status.

Objective:

This study aimed to adapt ‘ACTivate your Wellbeing’ a health and wellbeing programme, for use by university students and young person’s aged 16-24.

Methods:

A three-staged participatory, co-design approach was facilitated. Two participant groups reviewed the existing programme and provided feedback via structured review and focus group discussion (stage 1) before co-creating content (stage 2). Finally, the updated programme was evaluated (stage 3) with two groups of anticipated end-users.

Results:

Stage 1 identified that the website was appealing (n=19/24, 79%) to the new audience and thematic analysis generated three emergent themes, ‘well-being’, ‘Programme relevance’, and ‘areas for adaptation and update’. Six co-design tasks incorporated across five workshops (stage 2) generated 34 outputs. Participants (n=40) then evaluated the updated programme. Participants were split into two equal groups. Group A (graduate entry medical students) had low baseline wellbeing, self-selected programme duration however the majority did not compete the full 12-week programme (5% adherence). No improvement in wellbeing was observed. 77.8% of Group B (young persons aged 16-24) participants completed the three-week programme and saw an increase in wellbeing which neared significance (P=0.058). Of these, high users, measured by engagement points, had higher average wellbeing scores post intervention. Wellbeing was measured using the Warwick and Edinburgh mental wellbeing scale (WEMWBS).

Conclusions:

The study successfully employed a participatory, co-design approach to adapt and update an existing health and wellbeing programme. University students and young persons engaged with the participatory design process with interest and co-created adaptations and tailored content. The evaluation suggested that younger users who engaged more with the website, saw an increase in wellbeing. Equally the comparison between each participant group suggested that a younger audience and a shorter intervention duration was associated with higher adherence and completion rates.