Men on the Move: Leveraging technology to increase physical activity in middle to older African American men

African American men have lower rates of physical activity than White men and experience higher mortality rates due to chronic disease.  Few community-based physical activity interventions have been designed for African American men and none to date have included wearable devices to promote self-monitoring or used SMS text messaging.  In this presentation we will describe the benefits of using technology as a component to increase physical activity in African American men.  Men on the Move-Nashville, a 10-week pilot physical activity study, enrolled forty African American men ages 30 to 70 (mean age = 47.2).  African American men met weekly in a small group with a certified personal trainer to participate in discussions aimed to educate and motivate them to be more physically active, and they exercised together to increase endurance, strength and flexibility.  Throughout the week men used wearable devices to promote self-monitoring and social support, and received informational and motivational SMS text messages.  While they really enjoyed the small group activities, these African American men reported being motivated to engage in physical activity through each of these technologies.  Additionally, they found the wearable devices to be important ways to extend their social networks of physically active people.  From the intervention, we found significant increases in African American men’s levels of moderate and vigorous physical activities, and HDL cholesterol levels, and significant decreases in weight.  Technology-enhanced interventions hold promise in motivating African American men to increase their physical activity.