ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Adolesc. Med.
Sec. Obesity and Nutrition in Adolescents
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fradm.2025.1667649
This article is part of the Research TopicDigital mindfulness in primary care: Enhancing health through technologyView all 8 articles
The Development of a Mindful Eating App for Adolescents Through Mixed-Methods Feedback from Adolescents with Overweight or Obesity
Provisionally accepted
Monica Serrano-Gonzalez1,2*
Miranda Triedman1Amiya Mandapati1Joshua Ray Tanzer3Rochelle Rosen4Elissa Jelalian4,5Barbara Jandasek1,4,6- 1Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, United States
- 2Hasbro Children's Hospital, Providence, United States
- 3Brown University Health, Providence, United States
- 4Brown University Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Providence, United States
- 5Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, Providence, United States
- 6Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center, Providence, United States
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Introduction Obesity in childhood and adolescence continues to be a major public health challenge. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can be great adjuvants to multidisciplinary weight management interventions for adolescents. Delivery of MBI via mobile phones can decrease barriers to engagement. Mindfulness increases present-moment awareness, which may promote self-regulation, which is in turn important for weight management. Several studies have shown that delivering mindfulness training for adolescents via mobile devices may be feasible and acceptable, but this is still a growing area of research. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) is a framework that has been used to understand why individuals choose to use health apps. This study aims to gather adolescent perceptions about an existing mindful eating mobile app designed for adults, via mixed methods research, and to utilize their feedback to design and develop a mindful eating app for adolescents. Methods This was a cross-sectional, mixed methods study. Twenty-five adolescents, 13-17 years old, with a BMI ≥ 85th percentile completed a UTAUT-based survey and a semi-structured interview after viewing excerpts from an existing mindful eating mobile app. Results Adolescents with overweight/obesity are receptive to using a mindful eating app, with some concerns about Effort Expectancy and Self-Efficacy. Youth endorse that such an app should have reminders, short and colorful videos with captions, and it should be engaging, relatable, and non-judgmental. This information was used to develop a mindful-eating web-based app for adolescents, SAMBA (Study of an Adolescent Mindfulness-Based App). Conclusions We developed a mindful eating web-based app for adolescents utilizing feedback from this youth cohort using an existing mobile app as the starting point. Future directions include pilot testing the app and its content.
Keywords: mHealth, Mindful eating, mindfulness training, App development, adolescents, Obesity, UTAUT, semi-structured interview
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Serrano-Gonzalez, Triedman, Mandapati, Tanzer, Rosen, Jelalian and Jandasek. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Monica Serrano-Gonzalez, monica_serrano@brown.edu
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