Opportunity 

Obesity is one of the leading causes of preventable death in the United States due to its prevalence and connection to serious health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer.   

Identifying effective strategies for treating obesity is a clinical challenge and a public health priority. 

Intervention 

We designed the Leveraging Our Social Experiences and Incentives Trial (LOSE IT) to test the effectiveness of gamification interventions to enhance social incentives to promote weight loss and enrolled close to 100 obese adults in the study. 

Way to Health was used to administer and manage the program. 

Participants were required to recruit a family member or friend to their team, and each team was randomly assigned to a control group or one of two gamification interventions that used points and levels to enhance collaborative social incentives.  

Participants received a wireless weight scale and were asked to achieve 10,000 steps per day while using their smartphones to track physical activity. Teams completed weigh-ins at three points during the intervention period. 

Impact 

We found that using digital health devices to track health behaviors with a partner led to significant weight loss in all three arms and that participants who lived together lost more weight than those who lived separately.  

However, the gamification interventions were ineffective at promoting weight loss compared to the control.