# Tailoring Online Continence Promotion for Women

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2022 · $311,000

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Incontinence is common, costly, and vastly undertreated in women. Urinary and bowel
incontinence often co-occur and impact more than half of women after menopause, with
healthcare costs in excess of $30 billion per year. Lifestyle changes are recommended as first-
line treatment but most women are not aware of these strategies because they do not seek
care. Bringing information about these solutions to women outside the healthcare setting and
empowering them to make these behavior changes has the potential to improve symptoms,
impact quality of life, and decrease healthcare costs for millions of women. Our team developed
and tested Mind Over Matter: Healthy Bowels, Healthy Bladder (MOM), a small-group behavior
change intervention that improves urinary and bowel incontinence in women age 50 and older.
This program is innovative in its inclusion of strategies to improve both bladder and bowel
incontinence; its reach, however, is limited because it is delivered to small groups in community
settings. Our prior research showed that less than 20% of women with incontinence would
participate in a program like MOM, while over 60% would participate in an online continence
promotion program. Our team therefore obtained pilot funding to adapt MOM to an online
platform and demonstrated tremendous reach compared to the in-person program (>4,000
users in 3 months versus <300 users in 12 months). However, the majority of participants
visited the program only once and did not adopt behavior changes. Other disciplines have used
tailoring, a process through which inputs from a specific user are processed to generate
individualized outputs, to enhance engagement with electronic health promotion. Tailoring has
not been widely studied in continence promotion despite NIDDK recognizing individualization of
treatment for urinary incontinence as a significant research priority. We propose a randomized
controlled trial testing the impact of tailoring (versus an active control group with scheduled
digital reminders) on engagement with online MOM and adoption of health behaviors that
improve continence. We hypothesize that those with a tailored experience will use the program
more and be more likely to make behavior changes. In the final aim, we explore mechanisms
through which tailoring impacts behavior change. Our team approaches improving continence
promotion from a transdisciplinary perspective (psychology, human factors engineering, health
communication theory, and urogynecology) and proposes a study with potential to significantly
advance our understanding of how to personalize behavioral treatment for incontinence.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10378708
- **Project number:** 5R01DK128349-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** Heidi Wendell Brown
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $311,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-04-01 → 2024-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10378708

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10378708, Tailoring Online Continence Promotion for Women (5R01DK128349-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10378708. Licensed CC0.

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