Paper Info
Title
SOFA: an online social network for engaging and motivating families to adopt a healthy lifestyle
Abstract
Overweight and obesity have become a global epidemic and are increasing rapidly. Previous research has shown that providing social support and family support has profound roles on the weight management of individuals. However, the support provided by online health communities is outside the family context and is targeted at individuals. We are proposing SOFA (SOcial FAmily), an online social networking system aimed to engage and motivate families to adopt a healthy lifestyle through exposure to educational information on diet exercise and a range of other healthy living information. In this paper, we describe SOFA's features, the research questions that we are investigating and some preliminary results from a live deployment. The results showed that adding a social layer can considerably increase user engagement with static educational content and showed that the provision of family based profiles reduced the activity levels of individual family members when compared to those with individual profiles.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1145/1738826.1738871
OZCHI
Keywords
Field
DocType
family context,individual family member,individual profile,online social networking system,family support,healthy lifestyle,social support,healthy living information,educational information,social layer,social networks,social network,weight management
Genogram,Social network,Online health communities,Computer science,Weight management,Overweight,Social engagement,Social support,Family support,Multimedia
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
1.17
7
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nilufar Baghaei122726.75
Jill Freyne296967.07
Stephen Kimani361.17
Greg Smith461.17
Shlomo Berkovsky5102786.12
Dipak Bhandari61069.04
Nathalie Colineau716720.59
Cécile Paris81700243.43