Principal Findings
obesity, anxiety, eating behaviors, depressive, depression
OBESITY, RECRUITMENT
This early phase feasibility trial with middle-aged sexual minority women who experienced ELA and were at risk of obesity represents an initial effort to understand the use of a mindfulness-based mHealth approach that engages this underserved population and improves health outcomes. The findings provide initial support for remote recruitment and an app-delivered mindfulness intervention with sexual minority women. As the first study to contribute to mHealth intervention research on eating behaviors with sexual minority women, this fills an important gap in the literature regarding the use of mHealth for health promotion in this population. In addition, it highlights the need to address both eating behaviors and mental health concerns and use an app-based delivery model as an engagement approach with this marginalized population.It has been well documented that sexual minority women underuse health services and are less satisfied with the health system compared with their heterosexual female peers [Engagement is a critical issue in mHealth interventions. A recent meta-analysis on mHealth-based mental health intervention studies showed that the proportion of participants who completed all the modules or sessions was 34% to 36% for anxiety- and depression-related trials and 64% for general mental health [It is worth noting that although psychological distress was not an inclusion criterion, 86.7% of the sample had at least mild depressive or anxiety symptoms at baseline. Meta-analyses have revealed strong correlations of food addiction with depression (