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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BigO (Big data against childhood Obesity)

Teaser

Summary

Childhood and adolescent obesity is a major global and European public health problem. Currently, public actions are detached from local needs, mostly including indiscriminate blanket policies and single-element strategies, limiting their efficacy and effectiveness. The need for community-targeted actions has long been obvious, but the lack of monitoring and evaluation framework and the methodological inability to objectively quantify the local community characteristics, in a reasonable timeframe, has hindered that. Fortunately, technological achievements in mobile and wearable electronics and Big Data infrastructures allow the engagement of European citizens in the data collection process, allowing us to reshape policies at a regional, national and European level. In BigO, that will be facilitated through the development of a platform, allowing the quantification of behavioural community patterns through Big Data provided by wearables and eHealth- devices. During the project, BigO will reach out to more than 25.000 school and age-matched obese children and adolescents as sources for community data. Comprehensive models of the obesity prevalence dependence matrix will be created, allowing, for the first time the data-driven effectiveness predictions about specific policies on a community and the real-time monitoring of the population response, supported by powerful real-time data visualisations. In short, BigO will provide an innovative new suite, allowing the Public Health Authorities to evaluate their communities based on their obesity prevalence risk and to take local action, based on objective evidence. BigO does not aim to redefine, from the ground-up, the existing obesity-related policy strategies targeting childhood obesity prevalence. BigO does, however, aim to redefine the way those strategies are designed and deployed in the European societies.

Work performed

BigO engaged with public health experts throughout Europe to co-develop BigO with a view to supporting decision making in the execution of policies in childhood obesity prevention. A panel of 16 experts in 6 European countries (including policymakers, academics and advocates) reached consensus surrounding key indicators in the monitoring of childhood obesity and evaluating population-level prevention/treatment approaches. 45 measures of built environment, dietary environment and health inequalities have been identified of priority in relation to monitoring and evaluation of interventions in childhood obesity over the next 5-10 years. Examples are, availability of spaces for exercise and activity, safe cycling paths, pricing environment of foods and employment status of family.
Moreover, BigO obesity experts prioritized more than 40 behaviour indicators on eating, physical activity, and sleep.
The BigO monitoring system was released in November 2018. It includes an Android mobile app integrated with a WearOS smartwatch for recording of physical activity, meals and sleep. It links with sources such as Google maps, Fourthsquare and National Statistics agencies extracting measures of built, food and socioeconomic environment. A school portal and clinical portal for users & data administration and visualization enable its adoption both as a citizen science tool at schools and as a behaviour monitoring toolset in clinics. The system also features data export at different levels making it usable as a behaviour data collection system that could operate independently of BigO. For the first time a system combines monitoring of objective measures of individual behaviour and environment as well as subjective perceptions and personal information.
The data collection processes have also been defined in detail. At school, children and adolescents become citizen scientists to help local authorities assess the use behaviour of built and food environment and take the right decisions towards healthier living environments. Via the BigO mobile app they record physical activity, location and take pictures of their meals and food advertisements in their surroundings. They are engaged as citizen scientists at schools where they have an additional motivation to use BigO app because the data they collect is also used in school projects on home economy, physical education and informatics courses.
In the clinics, the BigO app is used by the patients as part of their follow-up enabling quantification of behaviour and help clinical decision making.
Approximately 300 students and patients aged 9-18 have already used BigO in schools and clinics in Athens, Larissa, Stockholm, Dublin and Wageningen (Figures 2, 3, 4 and 5). Ethical approvals have been received by the local ethical authorities.
In the first two years, system development and evaluation focused on the delivery of a robust system for data acquisition and monitoring so that large scale data collection activities can take place in year 3 at schools and clinics. Analytics and aggregated visualizations targeting the use by policy makers is the focus of the upcoming period.

Final results

The BigO system links for the first time: i) multiple device sensory measurements including accelerometry, location, proximity, camera and light; ii) external sources such as national and google databases measuring built, food and social environment and iii) anthropomorphic individual data and usersâ€™ perceptions around lifestyle and living environment. By linking these heterogeneous data, the BigO system extracts 42 behavioural indicators on eating, physical activity and sleep and 15 measures of exposure to built, food and social environment. These measures are in line with the needs of public health experts and policy makers with remit in childhood obesity.
Next step is to apply these methods on large scale datasets expected to be collected in the upcoming pilots in Larissa, Thessaloniki, Athens, Dublin and Stockholm. Such information can affect urban and transport planning decisions influencing physical (in)activity.
BigO is expected to contribute significantly in increasing the awareness about healthy living and in teaching young Europeans of Voluntarism, Citizen Science and Public Participation. Until now, more than 1600 children and adolescents in Stockholm, Athens, Larissa and Wageningen have been informed about healthy living and/or about becoming citizen scientists for childhood obesity research. Out of those, approximately 300 children and adolescents actively contributed by downloading the BigO mobile app and sharing their data on eating, physical activity, sleep as well as exposure to food advertisements.
BigO is also expected to contribute to the wide uptake of Big Data collection and analytics by public authorities who have traditionally being using statistical methods in the same way as public health epidemiologists. Recently, BigO attracted the interest of Official Statistics authorities, and the European Union Statistical Office (EUROSTAT) has decided to adopt the BigO monitoring system in the EU HACKATHON 2019.