Evaluating the effectiveness of the Gro Health mobile app to improve cardiometabolic health in people with type 2 diabetes in Australia.

Intervention: Gro Health mobile app plus standard care Materials: Participants in the intervention group will be provided with access to the Gro Health mobile app, a digital platform designed to support behaviour change across nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and mental wellbeing. Participants will receive verbal instructions and a unique referral code to download and activate the app on their personal mobile device (iOS or Android). Procedure: Participants in the intervention group will receive access to the Gro Health app. The app is self-directed, and participants will engage with any components of the app that they find useful, including educational modules, goal setting, meal planning, physical activity resources, mindfulness activities, and sleep support tools. Participants will continue to receive standard care from their usual treating clinician, including regular clinical assessments and routine pathology tests. Participants will attend in-person study visits at a diabetes specialist clinic for baseline, 3-month and 6-month follow-up assessments, which will include anthropometric measurements, clinical assessments, and questionnaire completion. Who: The Principal Investigator of the study is a practising clinician who will oversee study conduct and clinical care. The study will also be run by designated research staff, who are registered pharmacists, who will be responsible for participant recruitment, data collection, study assessments, and providing technical support to participants using the Gro Health app. Mode of Delivery: The Gro Health mobile app intervention will be delivered digitally via the participant’s own mobile device (iOS or Android). The intervention is self-directed and will be accessed remotely by participants in their usual environment (e.g. at home, work, or in the community). Participants will receive standard diabetes care from their usual treating clinician as part of routine clinical practice. Technical support will be available from the research team via phone or email if required. Duration &Location: Participants in the intervention group will have unlimited access to the Gro Health mobile app for 6 months. There are no set sessions or scheduled appointments as the app is self-directed. Participants are encouraged to engage with the app regularly and use any of the app features that suit their individual needs. Participants can access the app at any time and as often as they choose throughout the 6-month intervention period. Adherence: Support activities include technical assistance provided by the research team for any app-related issues. Participants will receive automated push notifications or email reminders from the app (approximately weekly if inactive) to encourage continued engagement. App usage analytics (log-ins, feature use, engagement frequency) will be collected by the researchers for monitoring adherence. *App Content Overview: The Gro Health mobile app delivers self-directed, educational and behavioural support content across four main domains: nutrition, physical activity, wellbeing, and sleep. Nutrition: includes short educational videos covering topics such as portion control, dietary management of type 2 diabetes, healthy versus unhealthy fats, low-carbohydrate dietary approaches, and meal planning. Participants can access a recipe library that can be filtered according to dietary preferences (e.g. high-protein, low-carbohydrate) and use a food diary to support self-monitoring. Physical activity: includes educational content and short instructional exercise videos, covering stretching, strength and mobility, cardiovascular exercise, yoga, and chair-based/sitting exercises. Exercise content is grouped by self-selected difficulty level (beginner, intermediate, or advanced). Wellbeing: this section provides educational content focused on mental wellbeing, including mindfulness education, guided meditations, relaxation music, and movement-based practices such as yoga, tai chi, and qigong. Sleep: this section includes educational videos on sleep health, along with bedtime-focused content such as guided sleep meditations, bedtime stories, and relaxation music. Across all domains, content is primarily delivered via short educational videos and guided activities. Participants may engage with any app components they find useful, at their own pace, throughout the intervention period.