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Virtual Reality to Combat Weight-Based Implicit Bias: BWH Pilot Study

NCT07283523 · Status: ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 52

Last updated 2025-12-16

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The goal of this pilot implementation study is to evaluate the impact of a virtual reality (VR) intervention on implicit bias for resident physicians. The main question it aims to answer are:

Does watching VR experience of two clinical encounters reduce implicit bias association test scores? Is the VR experience an acceptable intervention tool for reducing implicit bias?

Researchers will compare weight-based VR experiences consisting of two observed clinical encounters to a neutral education VR encounter to see if our intervention significantly impacts implicit bias association scores.

Participants will be asked

1. Complete Implicit Association test for weight-based bias pre-intervention and post-intervention (immediately, at one week, and one month after the intervention) to assess their implicit bias
2. Watch either experimental clinical encounter videos or neutral education video using a VR headset
3. Participants will also complete an abbreviated IAT related to views on compliance

Conditions

  • Implicit Bias
  • Implicit Association Test

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

360 Video on a Virtual Reality Headset

Two 360- videos watched via a VR headset where the study subject will witness a positive physician encounter with a compliant obese patient and a negative encounter with a non-compliant non-obese patient

BEHAVIORAL

360-Control Video

A neutral education video from the New England Journal of Medicine watched in a 360-theatre setting via a VR headset

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Brigham and Women's Hospital

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-11-19
Primary Completion
2026-11-30
Completion
2026-12-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT07283523 on ClinicalTrials.gov