Health Check: Obesity study

PAWTUCKET, R.I.—The World Health Organization says two thirds-of American adults are overweight or obese.

But what’s the best way to treat it?

A multiyear, multimillion-dollar study funded by the National Institutes of Health to answer that question will be done in Southern New England.

Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island designed the study to include 24 primary care practices throughout our area. The practices have not yet been named.

Doctors say obesity is an epidemic.

“Forty percent, at least in a primary care setting, 40 percent of the patients are either overweight or obese,“ said Dr. Charles Eaton, director of the Brown University Center for Primary Care and Prevention at Memorial Hospital.

Eaton is also a researcher interested in finding ways to help patients battle the bulge. He said frequent face-to-face meetings are the best way. But there are other, less time consuming ways.

“We’ve done three previous studies that show that by mailing, or by phone or by Internet, you could communicate with patients and get them to increase physical activity, increase fruits and vegetables. A study done in Pittsburgh showed that if you did this by mail at least over a one-year period, you could get people to lose weight without the face-to-face meetings,“ Eaton said.

With $3.5 million in grant money, the plan is to see what works best. Eaton is recruiting 24 primary care practices in our area.

Patients in half those practices “will get what’s presently paid for, a visit to a nutritionist, a baseline at six months and at 12 months and with a few mailings,“ Eaton said. “The other group will get this intensive treatment, which is weekly mailings and monthly phone interviews.“

That will include filling out a detailed weekly diary.

“The thought is if we can show this works then, let’s say, insurance companies can hire a few nutritionists. Since it’s all done home-based or by phone and mail, they can do this all outside of the practice, then we refer them back to the practice every three months a report saying how well your patient is doing,“ Eaton said.

Memorial Hospital is in the process of signing up practices in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts in the coming months.

The study will begin this fall.