POWER: A POpulation Health WEaRables Network in Low- and Middle-income Countries.

Non-communicable diseases (NCD), including cancer and heart disease, account for seven out of ten deaths globally, the majority of which occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Better understanding of risk factors for these diseases, which include lifestyle behaviours such as insufficient physical activity, is crucial to reversing this trend. The availability of wearable devices that can measure physical behaviours (eg walking, sitting) and environmental factors (eg air quality, temperature) has grown significantly in recent years. These devices are transforming our understanding of how lifestyle behaviours, and the contexts in which they take place, influence NCD-related risk and deaths. This is because they provide more accurate and detailed information about these factors than self-report questionnaires. Use of these devices in research, however, has been almost exclusively in high-income countries. We know little about the duration and location of physical behaviours measured by wearables in LMICs, for example. This is important because the types of behaviours undertaken and the environments in which they take place varies greatly between countries; this can result in differing associations with health and the need for tailored approaches to changing unhealthy behaviour patterns. The aim of this project is to build a network of researchers to support greater use of wearables to measure physical behaviours and environmental factors in LMICs. We will identify the interests and priorities of network members, barriers and enablers to the use of wearable devices in different settings, and establish new collaborations to support wider use of wearables in LMIC-based projects.