The INIT Lab and the Ruiz HCI Lab are collaborating with the Health Promotion Lab led by Dr. Kathryn Ross in the College of Public Health and Health Professions at UF to explore how Human-Centered AI systems can support long-term weight management.

Obesity is a global and national public health challenge that continues to increase. Existing clinical guidelines for the treatment of obesity recommend behavioral weight loss programs as the first-line approach. Personalized interventions delivered by a trained clinical interventionist can help individuals achieve long-term weight loss and maintenance that leads to improved health outcomes. However, access to professional health interventions is hindered by costs and limited availability. While automated health coaching through AI-powered mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) offers a relatively low-cost and scalable solution, fewer benefits are observed when these apps are offered as standalone solutions without additional expert intervention. Therefore, I aim to investigate how to design an AI-powered chatbot and integrate it into an existing digital health system to alleviate the workload of interventionists in behavioral weight loss programs, and thus increasing their availability to assist more clients.