The STICK Model to Stimulate Active and Sustained Healthy Physical Activity

Qian Geng, MD, EMBA, Innovation Center for Social Technology and Aging @JITRI and Nanjing City Vocational College; Sheyu Chen, PhD, Nanjing City Vocational College; Hongtu Chen, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School; Dongyang Zhang, MBA, Taiwan Health Movement League; Xiaofang Wang, RN, MBA, "Xiaofang Health Net" of Nanjing Radio and TV station; Tianshu Pan: PhD, Fudan University and Fudan Harvard Medical Anthropology Joint Research Center; Ning An, PhD, National Smart Eldercare International Science & Technology Collaboration Base and Hefei University of Technology; Zhenggang Bai, MD, Nanjing University of Science and Technology; Guoxing Rui, MD, MBA, Innovation Center for Social Technology and Aging @JITRI.

While physical activity is shown to dramatically decrease hospitalization expense and reduce mortality among older adults, behavior change from physical inactivity towards forming a new habit of regular physical exercise remains to be a difficult challenge globally. Different from the traditional, often ineffective, approach to shaping new behavior through standard health education lectures, we have developed a new system named the STICK model, based on the Social Technology Theory. The STICK model includes five action strategies: i.e., Social network through forming a peer group and supportive community to stimulate initial participation; application of digital Technology to enable health visualization of health status, fear, and progress, to maximize psychological feelings, trigger and strengthen activity change; Integrated service and support from the government, community, organizations in order to promote sustainable change; health Coach, who are the core for ensuring behavior change through goal setting, encouragement, and provision of feedback; and Key reward including culturally appropriate and timely material and symbolic incentives to maintain motivation for desirable changes. The STICK model is employed in two consecutive stages: In the initial, short-term intervention stage, we apply STICK to ensure behavior change from unfreezing inactivity stage to forming and consolidating a new behavior. In the subsequent, mid to long-term stage, we continue to use STICK strategies to turn the newly formed behavior into a habit that is actively managed by older adults themselves towards a sustainable lifestyle. The goal of this study is to implement and test the STICK model and identify predictors of exercise inertia and motivation development, so that we will be able to replicate and assess this approach on a larger scale.