The weight-loss experience : qualitative exploration

BACKGROUND: Long-term weight management consists of weight-loss, weight-loss maintenance, and weight-gain stages. Qualitative insights into weight management are now appearing in the literature however research appears to be biased towards explorations of weight-loss maintenance. The qualitative understanding of weight loss, which begets weight-loss maintenance and might establish the experiences and behaviours necessary for successful long-term weight management, is comparatively under-investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the weight-loss experiences of a sample of participants not aligned to clinical intervention research, in order to understand the weight-loss experiences of a naturalistic sample. METHODS: Participants (n=8) with weight-loss (n=4) and weight-maintenance experiences (n=4) were interviewed using a semi-structured interview to understand the weight-loss experience. Interview data was analysed thematically using Framework Analysis and was underpinned by realist meta-theory. RESULTS: Weight loss was experienced as an enduring challenge, where factors that assisted weight loss were developed and experienced dichotomously to factors that hindered it. Participants described barriers to (dichotomous thinking, environments, social pressures and weight centeredness) and facilitators of (mindfulness, knowledge, exercise, readiness to change, structure, self-monitoring and social support) their weight-loss goals in rich detail, highlighting that weight loss was a complex experience. CONCLUSIONS: Weight loss was a difficult task, with physical, social, behavioural and environmental that appeared to assist and inhibit weight-loss efforts concurrently. Health professionals might need to better understand the day-to-day challenges of dieters in order to provide more effective, tailored treatments. Future research should look to investigate the psycho-social consequences of weight-loss dieting, in particular self-imposed social exclusion and spousal sabotage and flexible approaches to treatment

How is success achieved by individuals innovating for patient safety and quality in the NHS?

Background: Innovation in healthcare is said to be notoriously difficult to achieve and sustain yet simultaneously the health service is under intense pressure to innovate given the ever increasing demands placed upon it. Whilst many studies have looked at diffusion of innovation from an organisational perspective, few have sought to understand how individuals working in healthcare innovate successfully. We took a positive deviance approach to understand how innovations are achieved by individuals working in the NHS. Method: We conducted in depth interviews in 2015 with 15 individuals who had received a national award for being a successful UK innovator in healthcare. We invited only those people who were currently (or had recently) worked in the NHS and whose innovation focused on improving patient safety or quality. Thematic analysis was used. Findings: Four themes emerged from the data: personal determination, the ability to broker relationships and make connections, the ways in which innovators were able to navigate organisational culture to their advantage and their ability to use evidence to influence others. Determination, focus and persistence were important personal characteristics of innovators as were skills in being able to challenge the status quo. Innovators were able to connect sometimes disparate teams and people, being the broker between them in negotiating collaborative working. The culture of the organisation these participants resided in was important with some being able to use this (and the current patient safety agenda) to their advantage. Gathering robust data to demonstrate their innovation had a positive impact and was seen as essential to its progression. Conclusions: This paper reveals a number of factors which are important to the success of innovators in healthcare. We have uncovered that innovators have particular personal traits which encourage a propensity towards change and action. Yet, for fruitful innovation to take place, it is important for relational networks and organisational culture to be receptive to change

A community-based lifestyle and weight loss intervention promoting a Mediterranean-style diet pattern evaluated in the stroke belt of North Carolina: the Heart Healthy Lenoir Project

Abstract Background Because residents of the southeastern United States experience disproportionally high rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD), it is important to develop effective lifestyle interventions for this population. Methods The primary objective was to develop and evaluate a dietary, physical activity (PA) and weight loss intervention for residents of the southeastern US. The intervention, given in eastern North Carolina, was evaluated in a 2 year prospective cohort study with an embedded randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a weight loss maintenance intervention. The intervention included: Phase I (months 1–6), individually-tailored intervention promoting a Mediterranean-style dietary pattern and increased walking; Phase II (months 7–12), option of a 16-week weight loss intervention for those with BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 offered in 2 formats (16 weekly group sessions or 5 group sessions and 10 phone calls) or a lifestyle maintenance intervention; and Phase III (months 13–24), weight loss maintenance RCT for those losing ≥ 8 lb with all other participants receiving a lifestyle maintenance intervention. Change in diet and PA behaviors, CVD risk factors, and weight were assessed at 6, 12, and 24 month follow-up. Results Baseline characteristics (N = 339) were: 260 (77 %) females, 219 (65 %) African Americans, mean age 56 years, and mean body mass index 36 kg/m2. In Phase I, among 251 (74 %) that returned for 6 month follow-up, there were substantial improvements in diet score (4.3 units [95 % CI 3.7 to 5.0]), walking (64 min/week [19 to 109]), and systolic blood pressure (−6.4 mmHg [−8.7 to −4.1]) that were generally maintained through 24 month follow-up. In Phase II, 138 (57 group only, 81 group/phone) chose the weight loss intervention and at 12 months, weight change was: −3.1 kg (−4.9 to −1.3) for group (N = 50) and −2.1 kg (−3.2 to −1.0) for group/phone combination (N = 75). In Phase III, 27 participants took part in the RCT. At 24 months, weight loss was −2.1 kg (−4.3 to 0.0) for group (N = 51) and −1.1 kg (−2.7 to 0.4) for combination (N = 72). Outcomes for African American and whites were similar. Conclusions The intervention yielded substantial improvement in diet, PA, and blood pressure, but weight loss was modest. Trial registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT0143348

Working to Increase Stability through Exercise (WISE): screening, recruitment, and baseline characteristics

Background The aim of this paper is to describe the utility of various recruitment modalities utilized in the Working to Increase Stability through Exercise (WISE) study. WISE is a pragmatic randomized trial that is testing the impact of a 3-year, multicomponent (strength, balance, aerobic) physical activity program led by trained volunteers or delivered via DVD on the rate of serious fall-related injuries among adults 65 and older with a past history of fragility fractures (e.g., vertebral, fall-related). The modified goal was to recruit 1130 participants over 2 years in three regions of Pennsylvania. Methods The at-risk population was identified primarily using letters mailed to patients of three health systems and those over 65 in each region, as well as using provider alerts in the health record, proactive recruitment phone calls, radio advertisements, and presentations at community meetings. Results Over 24 months of recruitment, 209,301 recruitment letters were mailed, resulting in 6818 telephone interviews. The two most productive recruitment methods were letters (72% of randomized participants) and the research registries at the University of Pittsburgh (11%). An average of 211 letters were required to be mailed for each participant enrolled. Of those interviewed, 2854 were ineligible, 2,825 declined to enroll and 1139 were enrolled and randomized. Most participants were female (84.4%), under age 75 (64.2%), and 50% took an osteoporosis medication. Not having a prior fragility fracture was the most common reason for not being eligible (87.5%). The most common reason provided for declining enrollment was not feeling healthy enough to participate (12.6%). Conclusions The WISE study achieved its overall recruitment goal. Bulk mailing was the most productive method for recruiting community-dwelling older adults at risk of serious fall-related injury into this long-term physical activity intervention trial, and electronic registries are important sources and should be considered

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe