Theresa Beckie, PhD, MN, BScN, RN, FAHA, FAAN, FAAAS, professor and research faculty
at the USF Health College of Nursing, has been awarded an RO1 grant for more than
$3.5 million from the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes
of Health (NIH). The funding will support a trial of HerBeat, a secondary prevention
intervention involving a smartphone and smartwatch that helps women with coronary
heart disease improve their heart-healthy behaviors..
The project grows out of a question Beckie pursued for nearly three decades. At Tampa
General Hospital, she was interviewing a patient for a research study when his wife
mentioned that she survived three heart attacks without recognizing what they were.
Beckie had been studying heart disease in both men and women, but that encounter turned
her focus to women.
The gap she saw is still there. Center-based cardiac rehabilitation (CBCR) is the
gold standard after a heart attack or heart surgery, yet women are referred less often
than men, enroll less often, and are less likely to finish. Beckie’s research shows
as few as 10% of referred women enroll in these programs, and up to 72% of those who
start never finish. Additionally, when a supervised program ends, many women are
left without a clear way to continue healthy habits at home.
Beckie has worked on this problem for years. In 2004, she received an NIH grant to
run a five-year study of women-only cardiac rehabilitation. It paired supervised exercise
with education designed for women and a team that included psychologists to address
depression, anxiety and stress. The study was a success, but the model was costly
to replicate and reached only women with the insurance to attend. It became the starting
point for HerBeat, a way to carry the lessons of that program into women’s everyday
lives.
HerBeat delivers support where women already are. Throughout the day, participants
receive motivational messages grounded in behavior change theory, along with brief
check-ins that help tailor the support to what is happening in their lives. Women
choose their own goals across five areas of heart health: physical activity, healthy
eating, stress management, medication adherence and, when relevant, quitting smoking.
A smartwatch and smartphone track progress as well as certain health metrics like
daily step counts, and a health coach reviews each participant’s activity on a web-based
dashboard and calls weekly to help her problem-solve.
Beckie emphasizes that HerBeat is not a substitute for cardiac rehabilitation. It
is designed to cover the behaviors that matter most to heart health and to reach women
who may never set foot in a rehab center.
In the randomized controlled trial, HerBeat will be compared with an educational approach
built around the American Heart Association workbook An Active Partnership for Your Health, a resource commonly used in cardiac rehabilitation to teach patients about heart-healthy
living. The question is whether a personalized, technology-supported approach can
do more for women than education alone.
HerBeat is the product of collaboration. She completed USF’s I-Corps program and secured
early funding from the National Science Foundation and the USF Foundation to build
and pilot test a prototype. With funding, she assembled a team with experts from the
USF Muma College of Business, the USF College of Engineering, and the Bellini College
of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Computing.
Graduate students in computer engineering and business did much of the technical work,
and one business doctoral student wrote his dissertation on the app’s development.
Women consulted during pilot testing also shaped the design, from the colors and fonts
to the images.
The early days were hands-on. The team gathered to work out how the app would function,
with ideas for the prototype drawn out on posterboards. Beckie never threw them away.
They remain in her office, a reminder of where the project began.
“Behavior change is hard,” Beckie says. “But so is living with heart disease.” With
this new funding, she and her team will test whether HerBeat can make that change
more achievable for the women who need it most.
With the funding secured to test HerBeat with trial participants, Beckie is now able
to begin building the team to execute the study which will begin in early 2027.
Source: www.usf.edu
