WeNet pre-pilot student activities continue in Mexico

The WeNet project activities with local student volunteers in Mexico continued with a second recruiting workshop held on November 8th, 2019. The workshop took place at Universidad Tangamanga, San Luis Potosí City, and gathered 90 local college nutrition students who participate in the WeNet the project as volunteers.

The overall goal of WeNet in Mexico is to use new mobile technologies to study a pervasive problem affecting young people: overweight and obesity. According to national statistics, there are more than six million people under 25 affected by this health issue. The WeNet platform will be used to study the overall environment of young people in relation to their eating and physical activity habits.

The workshop had three goals.

1. The first goal was to introduce the WeNet project in detail to a number of students who were interested in participating.
2. The second goal was for volunteers to understand and ask questions about the specific terms of participation in the study. Volunteers who were interested in joining the study after this phase were asked to complete a consent form.
3. The third goal was to complete a series of initial questionnaires about the students’ habits regarding eating, mobility, physical activity, and the use of mobile technology.

The workshop was coordinated by the You-i Lab team at IPICYT led by Dr. Salvador Ruiz Correa, partner of WeNet project.

In the next phase of the pre-pilot, running till the end of the year, we will use the i-Log mobile app to collect detailed data about eating and physical activity. Several WeNet partners are contributing to this phase. The i-Log tool was developed at the University of Trento (UNITN) to collect in-situ data from phone sensors and short surveys. The implementation of the infrastructure for data collection involves a collaboration between UNITN and U-Hopper. Once collected, the mobile data will be analyzed through collaboration between Idiap and IPICYT.

During a second phase of the pre-pilot, students participating in the second workshop will provide feedback to evaluate WeNet experimental protocol and reflect on eating and physical activity practices related to overweight and obesity.