Together through thick and thin: Cohabiting partners’ reciprocal influence during men’s attempts to change their dietary practices and physical activity to lose weight and maintain weight loss

Background: Overweight and obesity are major health problems globally, particularly in men. Some group-based interventions for men, such as Football Fans in Training (FFIT), a gender-sensitised weight management and healthy living programme for overweight or obese men, have proven successful in helping men initiate and achieve weight loss. However, there is still a need to understand how men’s attempts to make changes to health practices are influenced by their social context. This study explored how men’s attempts to change their dietary practices and physical activity to lose weight and maintain weight loss were influenced by, and influenced, their cohabiting female partners within the context of FFIT. Method: Separate interviews were conducted with 20 men and their cohabiting female partners 3-12 months after men had completed FFIT. Their experiences around men’s participation in FFIT and subsequent attempts to change dietary practices and physical activity were explored. Data were thematically analysed, guided by Self-Determination, Social Support, Interdependence, and Gender theories. Results: All partners in this study were supportive of men’s autonomous decisions to join FFIT. Each partner displayed varied levels of involvement in the process of men’s attempts to make changes to dietary practices and physical activity. Men’s success or failure in making and maintaining changes, and/or achieving weight loss, was described as resulting from their resoluteness for the changes, responsiveness to FFIT and reliance on/receptiveness to the partner’s involvement and support. Men’s participation in FFIT also positively influenced the partners’ dietary practices and physical activity, as well as couples’ relationships despite some tensions and conflicts arising during this process. Conclusion: Cohabiting couples’ close relationships provide a supportive context for overweight or obese men to initiate the pursuit of weight loss, and maintain healthy dietary practices and physical activity. This study also highlights the mechanisms by which partners influence men’s changes to dietary practices and physical activity following a weight loss intervention, and how they too are influenced in this process. It thus helps explain how varying behaviour change outcomes can occur within an intervention. This study highlights the importance, and the bidirectional nature, of health behaviour change in the cohabiting couples’ context

How men receive and utilise partner support when trying to change their diet and physical activity within a men’s weight management programme

We thank: the FFIT participants and their partners who took part in the research; The Scottish Premier Football League (SPFL) Trust, the football clubs and the coaches; and the Population Health Research Facility at MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Increasing Engagement for Breast Cancer Screening and Treatment : The "ICANTREAT" Community of Expertise Initiative

Funding The workshop and the travel for four researchers – AP, SN, RS and SJM was enabled through the Scottish Funding Council (grant number SF10192) grant.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A protocol for the development of Core Outcome Sets for effectiveness trials and clinical audits in Renal Cell Cancer (R-COS)

The data collection for the interview study is funded by NHS Grampian Endowments, and the costs of the interview transcriptions and eDelphi licences will be paid by the Arcobaleno Cancer Trust. Neither funder had any role in the design of the study. All other parts of the study are currently unfunded. The research team is not personally reimbursed for their time and efforts apart from research input by SD, which is financed by Swedish government funding of clinical research (ALF).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The need for core outcome sets in renal cancer clinical effectiveness research

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Key Role of Patient Involvement in the Development of Core Outcome Sets in Prostate Cancer

Funding/Support and role of the sponsor: This research was supported by funding under the PIONERR Consortium. The Consortium played a role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; and preparation, review, and approval of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Constraints on the cosmic expansion history from GWTC-3

We use 47 gravitational-wave sources from the Third LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-3) to estimate the Hubble parameter $H(z)$, including its current value, the Hubble constant $H_0$. Each gravitational-wave (GW) signal provides the luminosity distance to the source and we estimate the corresponding redshift using two methods: the redshifted masses and a galaxy catalog. Using the binary black hole (BBH) redshifted masses, we simultaneously infer the source mass distribution and $H(z)$. The source mass distribution displays a peak around $34\, {\rm M_\odot}$, followed by a drop-off. Assuming this mass scale does not evolve with redshift results in a $H(z)$ measurement, yielding $H_0=68^{+12}_{-7} {\rm km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ ($68\%$ credible interval) when combined with the $H_0$ measurement from GW170817 and its electromagnetic counterpart. This represents an improvement of 17% with respect to the $H_0$ estimate from GWTC-1. The second method associates each GW event with its probable host galaxy in the catalog GLADE+, statistically marginalizing over the redshifts of each event's potential hosts. Assuming a fixed BBH population, we estimate a value of $H_0=68^{+8}_{-6} {\rm km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ with the galaxy catalog method, an improvement of 42% with respect to our GWTC-1 result and 20% with respect to recent $H_0$ studies using GWTC-2 events. However, we show that this result is strongly impacted by assumptions about the BBH source mass distribution; the only event which is not strongly impacted by such assumptions (and is thus informative about $H_0$) is the well-localized event GW190814

Search for continuous gravitational wave emission from the Milky Way center in O3 LIGO--Virgo data

We present a directed search for continuous gravitational wave (CW) signals emitted by spinning neutron stars located in the inner parsecs of the Galactic Center (GC). Compelling evidence for the presence of a numerous population of neutron stars has been reported in the literature, turning this region into a very interesting place to look for CWs. In this search, data from the full O3 LIGO--Virgo run in the detector frequency band $[10,2000]\rm~Hz$ have been used. No significant detection was found and 95$\%$ confidence level upper limits on the signal strain amplitude were computed, over the full search band, with the deepest limit of about $7.6\times 10^{-26}$ at $\simeq 142\rm~Hz$. These results are significantly more constraining than those reported in previous searches. We use these limits to put constraints on the fiducial neutron star ellipticity and r-mode amplitude. These limits can be also translated into constraints in the black hole mass -- boson mass plane for a hypothetical population of boson clouds around spinning black holes located in the GC.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure