Abstract 10698: Towards a Dialogue Agent to Assist African American and Hispanic/Latino Heart Failure Patients with Dietary Restrictions

Abstract

Background: Restricting dietary sodium is a common recommendation to address symptoms in heart failure (HF) patients. However, using the information provided on nutrition labels can be complex, leading to lapses in adherence. This problem is compounded by insufficient information on ethnic preferences in dietary habits. Based on our previous findings we developed a prototype dialogue agent (HF-DA) to assist African American (AA) and Hispanic Latino (H/L) patients with their HF self-care needs, including understanding nutrition labels and providing practical information per FDA recommendations. Objective: Compare HF-DA against existing technology in the public domain in assisting AA and H/L HF patients to make healthy food choices. Methods: We conducted a review of existing technology in two ways. 1: Google search engine: We measured the number of actions (typing, scrolling, clicking) required to find a source for a food’s sodium content matching the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommendations and used a calculator to understand the total sodium in a desired serving size. We identified relevant search terms by analyzing the commonly used words in the transcripts from our HF patient education sessions with their health educators (18 AA and 2 H/L) and 1:1 interviews with HF patients (3 AA and 1 H/L). 2: Google Play Store: We downloaded the top 15 apps using the search term “heart failure” and explored their functionality. Results: Google’s search engine required users to perform 1 action to identify the sodium content and percent daily value but then needed 6-8 actions (dependent on query length) to calculate sodium content of total serving size. Our HF-DA provides this information in 4 actions. Of the 15 apps available in the Play Store, none had any features for understanding nutrition labels. Conclusion: Our preliminary analysis revealed there are very few culturally sensitive technological resources available to assist HF patients in understanding nutrition labels. These resources require a patient to understand nutrition labels, perform arithmetic, and recall dietary restrictions. HF-DA is capable of promoting healthy eating habits by aiding HF patients' decision-making process by providing reliable information in fewer steps.