About Dr. Jacqueline Mair

Dr Jacqueline Mair is a Senior Scientist with the Mobile Health Interventions module of the Future Health Technologies (FHT) programme at the Singapore-​ETH Centre (SEC) and the Core Director of Behavioural Health and Disease Prevention at the Centre for Digital Health Interventions in Switzerland. As part of a collaborative effort by the FHT programme and the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Jacqueline is currently developing and evaluating a smartphone-​based and chatbot-​delivered lifestyle intervention for the prevention of non-communicable disease and common mental disorders.

Jacqueline’s research interests lie with designing, optimising, and evaluating, scalable and accessible digital health interventions that leverage sensor data to help people lead a healthy lifestyle and improve their health and wellbeing. She originally trained as an exercise scientist, completing her BSc (Hons) at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland in 2008 and her PhD at University College Dublin, Ireland in 2013, and has since developed interest and expertise in the role of technology in supporting movement behaviours and lifestyle behaviour change.

About the Lecture

Movement behaviours, including physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep, are important for good mental and physical health. Yet physical activity levels around the world remain low and unchanged despite efforts to get our nations moving more. In the 2022 Global Status Report on physical activity, the WHO warn that inaction will result in an estimated 500 million new cases of preventable chronic disease from physical inactivity by 2030, incurring treatment costs of just over US$ 300 billion or around US$ 27 billion annually. So what can be done to address the inactivity pandemic?

This lecture will discuss how innovations in mHealth technology could be leveraged to support people to move more and improve their health. This will include an overview of the evidence supporting the use of wearables and apps to measure and change movement behaviours, new research insights from our centre using smartphones and wearables to deliver just-in-time adaptive interventions and chatbot-delivered coaching interventions, and a look at what the future might hold with regards to moving more with mHealth.

We are pleased to invite you to join this guest lecture. Registration is not required. Please be aware that we will be recording this guest lecture and will be making it available in our teaching library. If you have any questions, please contact Ivana Cabalzar (icabalzar@ethz.ch) prior to the start of the guest lecture.