The NIH Collaboratory is excited to announce the addition of LE8 Bot + BackUp (or Using Artificially Intelligent Text Messaging Technology to Improve American Heart Association's Life's Essential 8 Health Behaviors) to its portfolio of innovative NIH Collaboratory Trials.

The American Heart Association (AHA) identifies Life's Essential 8 (LE8) lifestyle factors as eating better, being more active, quitting tobacco, getting healthy sleep, managing weight, controlling cholesterol, managing blood sugar, and managing blood pressure. When uncontrolled, these lifestyle factors lead to common coexisting chronic conditions, morbidity, healthcare costs, and death. Patients who experience health disparities are disproportionately affected by cardiovascular diseases, have worse disease control, and suffer greater sequelae.

LE8 Bot + Backup will use a patient-level randomized pragmatic trial to test the comparative effectiveness of 3 text messaging delivery strategies that have been shown to improve an individual's self-management health behaviors, including physical activity and medication adherence. The study findings will provide evidence regarding the best population-based strategy for universal delivery to engage all patients with health disparities in self-management to improve the AHA's LE8.

Dr. Michael Ho and Dr. Sheana Bull will serve as the co–principal investigators for LE8 Bot + Backup. Dr. Ho is a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Dr. Bull is a professor and past chair of the Department of Community and Behavioral Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, as well as the director of the mHealth Impact Lab.

The LE8 Bot + Backup NIH Collaboratory Trial is supported within the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

Ho and Bull are experienced investigators in the NIH Collaboratory, and both serve currently as co-PIs on the Nudge NIH Collaboratory Trial.