MELIORA Virtual Coach Intervention for Breast Cancer Prevention

Based on baseline assessments, the MELIORA VCI app will prompt intervention group participants to set weekly goals on lifestyle behaviours such as physical activity, diet, alcohol use, and sedentary time, and support daily self-monitoring and step count tracking. Goals will be dynamically adjusted by the virtual coach or the participant to remain realistic and achievable. Τhe app will also offer culturally adapted educational, motivational, and instructional support through mini-courses, tips, recommendations and an embedded library of relevant materials to ensure high adoption rates among women from diverse countries, socioeconomic backgrounds and minority groups. To boost motivation, it will include reminders, gamification features like badges and points, as well as personalized techniques such as action planning, problem solving, social reward, and positive self-talk.

The control group will receive the standard of care that is generic advice for a healthy lifestyle and BC prevention. A 'light' version of the MELIORA VCI app will be developed to host the control group materials, track participants' step counts, send reminders, and allow scheduling of follow-up visits. No other features will be available in this version of the app.