GoWoman: The Development of a Virtual World Weight Management Intervention for Women with Mobility Impairments

The GoWoman project is developing and pilot testing the first small group weight management program designed to meet the unique needs of women with mobility impairments, a significantly underserved health disparity population. The project is conducted by a consortium of investigators at five universities in partnership with a Community Advisory Board of five women with mobility impairments. In adapting existing curriculum from the Diabetes Prevention Program, we added content related to the association between disability and weight gain, adaptive cooking, accessible kitchen design, an expanded range of physical activities, precautions against excessive activities and exercises, disability-related stress, and examples that reflect the life situation of women with disabilities. Participants track their progress through MyFitnessPal. Offering this intervention in the online virtual world of Second Life allows us to circumvent many of the geographic, transportation, logistic, disability, and personal barriers that women with mobility impairments face when attempting to participate in public weight loss programs. Our simulated accessible kitchen, café, and physical activity venues also provide congenial and stigma-free environments for offering social interaction opportunities to reinforce the weight loss programming. The intervention consists of facilitated groups of 8-10 women who gather using their avatar and communicate using voice or text. Sessions last two hours and convene once a week for 16 weeks. We will demonstrate this virtual venue and present the results of the beta-test. We will discuss advantages and technical challenges of implementing interventions in virtual environments, and the implications of this study for mainstream weight loss programs.