SMILE: Clinical Trial to Evaluate Mindfulness as Intervention for Racial and Ethnic Populations During COVID-19

Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate the SMILE app, a Digital Health Platform (DHP), that will deliver a mindfulness intervention, designed to mitigate COVID-19 related stress. Additionally, the SMILE app will remotely collect self-reported psychological and physiological metrics of mental health and autonomic regulation. Study participants are adults who self-identify as African American, Black and/or Latino, and who have clinically significant levels of anxiety.

The study aims are:

* Aim 1: Establish the effectiveness and durability of an 8-week Mindfulness DHP intervention. The investigators will focus on two constructs important to mental health and hypothesize that: A) Anxiety, self-report stress and quality-of-life measures will significantly improve when comparing: A.1) Pre-to-post intervention, and; A.2) Control vs. intervention groups over 8 weeks and at 1-month follow-up. B) Arousal, autonomic indices of HRV (reflecting parasympathetic activation) will significantly improve, when comparing: B.1) Pre-to-post intervention, and; B.2) Control vs. intervention groups over 8 weeks and at 1-month follow-up.
* Aim 2: Establish the sustainability of two Mindfulness DHP interventions utilizing retention, usage (frequency), and participant satisfaction.
* Aim 3: Examine associations between COVID-19 related stress, mental health outcomes, and HRV. Examine the extent to which COVID-19 related stress and mental health symptoms are linked to HRV at baseline and how that relationship changes over time.

Participants will be assigned to 1 of 3 arms of the study: MTIA intervention, MAPP intervention, or wait-list control. All participants will be mailed a device with the SMILE app installed, and the equipment for recording cardiac data in the home. All participants will complete the baseline psychometrics measures and physiological stress test using the instructions provided on the SMILE app. Those assigned to the MTIA or MAPP intervention groups will then participate in their assigned intervention over the subsequent 8 weeks. During these 8 weeks, psychometric and physiological data will be completed biweekly for all participants. 3 months following the initial baseline, all participants will complete a final psychometric/physiological evaluation.

Conditions

• Anxiety
• COVID-19 Pandemic

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Mindfulness

Mindfulness meditation has been described as a behavioral technique involving the intentional self-regulation of attention to present-moment experience, combined with release of cognitive fixation on thoughts (whether simple images or complex story lines) regarding the past or future. Through training in mindfulness, individuals learn to evoke and sustain a non-judgmental state of present-moment awareness.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)

  collaborator NIH

• RTI International

  collaborator OTHER

• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Susan Gaylord, PhD · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Maria Davila, PhD · Research Triangle Institute (RTI)

• Keri J Heilman, PhD · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

99 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-05-13

Primary Completion

2025-05-27

Completion

2025-05-27

Countries

• United States

Study Locations