Tae Joon Moon, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at The University of Texas School of Public Health San Antonio specializing in using tech to improve health. He develops and designs remote interventions and mobile applications that he hopes will promote changes in human behavior.
Right now, he’s focused on interventions for people with alcohol use disorder.
“Texas is notorious for high rates of DWI,” Moon said. “San Antonio is consistently ranked fourth or fifth across the whole country in terms of frequency of DWI arrests.”
Moon is researching ways to reduce alcohol use in people who’ve been arrested for DWI, using transdermal alcohol sensors in the form of ankle or wrist monitors that measure ethanol in sweat.
Assistant Professor, Department of Health, Behavior, and Society
UT School of Public Health San Antonio
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
“That is a technology already used in the judicial system, so we thought maybe we could make use of that monitoring technology for a clinical purpose,” Moon said. “We can follow their alcohol use 24/7, it’s a very objective measure, and is less obtrusive compared to a frequent visit to the clinic to provide the urine sample.”
His recent study paid $50 to people with DWI arrests who reduced their drinking, and — according to their transdermal alcohol sensors — many did. Perhaps more importantly, Moon said, they improved their self-efficacy.
“Developing self-efficacy, which means control over the situation, can help them to build new habits to control their drinking,” Moon said.
But the bigger takeaway here, for him, is that you can use readily available technology in new ways to make health interventions more accessible.
“Technology can contribute to significantly reducing the cost and increase the convenience to the patient,” Moon said. “So there's a huge opportunity there.”
It’s an opportunity to find ways to use tech to address health challenges for people who struggle to access care for reasons that can include their race, where they live, or how much money they have, Moon said. The implementation of transdermal alcohol sensors is a good example of using remote technology to bring interventions to people who need them, rather than forcing them to figure out how to get themselves to the intervention.
Science & Medicine is a collaboration between TPR and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, about how scientific discovery in San Antonio advances the way medicine is practiced everywhere.
