The BWEL study, a collaborative effort between Harvard, Dana Farber, and Smashing Boxes, aimed to prevent the recurrence of early-stage breast cancer through a web-based intervention for 3,200 women, focusing on weight, food, and exercise tracking, and providing coaching support, resulting in significant weight loss and presented at ASCO 2023.
The Dana Farber Cancer Institute had seen studies that showed physically active individuals who maintain a healthy weight may be less likely to develop some types of cancer and chronic diseases. Additionally, there was evidence that a weight-loss intervention could prevent recurrence in women with early stage breast cancer, but a randomized control trial had not been done to date. Dana Farber was working with Harvard to run an intervention that would target 3,200 women, with half to receive the intervention. The intervention included calls with coaches as well as homework to complete including weight, food, and exercise tracking.
Harvard approached Smashing Boxes to build out a web application that could help with tracking the women’s weight, food, exercise routines and connect them to a coach. The website needed to have a way to track participants’ homework and a history of their tracked weight, food, and exercise. In addition to tracking, the study had worksheets for participants to interact with during the study. Each participant’s coach also needed a way to access their profile to see the progress they made.
Smashing Boxes created an engaging web application for study administrators, coaches, and participants to connect. By working iteratively, Smashing Boxes was able to create an online portal that did the following:
Statisticians can easily track how well a patient is progressing in the study. Smashing Boxes made it easy to track daily calorie intake, activity, and weight by integrating with the participant’s Fitbits and bluetooth-enabled scale.
Throughout the study, coaches were able to assign homework to participants in the form of worksheets and interactive questions. Participants interacted with these worksheets and answered a series of questions based on their lifestyle. Coaches then reviewed the completed homework assignments and were able to track the participant’s progress.
Coaches could seamlessly schedule calls with the participants to discuss the homework and provide tips on how to stay active and maintain a healthy lifestyle balance. While on those calls, coaches could take notes and record their conversations all within the web portal. Harvard BWEL offered a simple solution to make the relationship between coach and patient as easy and helpful as possible.
After the 6 year study was complete, it found that telephone-based weight loss intervention had a significant impact on the participant's ability to lose weight. The findings were presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) annual meeting. Now that it has been proven that telephone-based weight loss works, Dana Farber will further the study to see long-term impacts on disease outcomes.
