Carmina Valle
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Obesity is a leading cause of illness, and young adults face the highest risk of weight gain. In-person weight-loss programs work, but they are costly and reach few people.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
obesity
weight management
behavioral weight loss
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Test whether a 6-month mHealth weight-loss program tailored to adolescent and young adult cancer survivors produces greater weight loss at 6 months than a self-guided program, in a nationwide randomized trial of 240 survivors.
- Examine whether the survivor program keeps weight off from 6 to 12 months and improves frailty, activity measured with ActiGraph monitors, diet, quality of life, and cardiometabolic biomarkers, and which psychological factors explain the effects.
- Evaluate how each of seven types of behavior change technique messages affects daily adherence to weighing, activity, and red-food goals, using a micro-randomized trial in 201 young adults using the Nudge app.
- Determine whether message effects change over the 6-month program and whether participants' contextual factors alter them, to guide the design of future just-in-time adaptive weight-loss interventions.
More about the research
Phone and web programs reach many more people but usually produce smaller weight losses. The lab develops and tests mobile health (mHealth) weight-management programs for young people. One project tailors a program to survivors of adolescent and young adult cancer. The other uses a special trial design to find out which app messages, sent at which moments, help young adults stick to daily weight-loss habits.
Why it matters
Survivors of adolescent and young adult cancer currently have no weight-loss program designed for them, despite high risks of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. A remotely delivered program, if shown to work, could reach survivors anywhere in the US and reduce their burden of illness. Identifying which app messages help at which moments could also make low-cost mobile weight-loss tools more effective for young adults with obesity.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Andrea Graham
Northwestern University, IL·Psychology
Identify which of five evidence-based treatment targets in the FoodSteps mobile program reduce binge eating for which adults with obesity, by randomly delivering one target to each user every week in a 16-week micro-randomized trial.
Katie Devine
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Psychology
Test whether Managing Your Health, a mobile app combined with six peer-mentor sessions, improves self-management behaviors and quality of life compared with educational control in a randomized trial of 300 childhood cancer survivors aged 18–25.
Cherise Harrington
North Carolina Central University, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Adapt BeFAB, a digital weight-management program first tested in postpartum women with overweight or obesity, for young adults in a historically Black college or university setting, informed by community stakeholder input.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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