303507
Healthy Homes/Healthy Families: Results from a Coaching Intervention RCT to Prevent Weight Gain in Low-Income Rural Women
Changing environments in which people spend a significant amount of time, such as their homes, may support healthier eating and physical activity behaviors and subsequently prevent weight gain.
Approach
The Healthy Homes/Healthy Families randomized controlled trial tested a 5 month coaching intervention focusing on the home environment to facilitate healthy eating and physical activity to prevent weight gain. Participants were overweight or obese women ages 35-65 recruited from federally qualified health centers in Southwest Georgia. Results
Most of the 353 randomized women were African American, low-income, and not employed. The average BMI at baseline was 38.2. At 6 months post baseline, intervention participants had improved their household food inventories and food placement, as well as changed behaviors regarding grocery shopping and meal preparation. Participants had fewer family meals from restaurants and ate less frequently with the television on. They also expanded their exercise equipment inventory, improved placement of such equipment, and created dedicated exercise spaces. The women who were coached incorporated more physical activity into their daily lives, e.g. by parking further away from a store.
Intervention participants decreased their caloric intake significantly more than those in the comparison group, both at 6 months and 12 months post baseline. However, there was no change in objectively measured physical activity.
Discussion
The coaching based intervention to prevent weight gain can change the physical home environment for healthy eating and physical activity as well as healthy eating behaviors long term.
Learning Areas:
Chronic disease management and preventionPlanning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Social and behavioral sciences
Learning Objectives:
Describe one approach to coaching to prevent weight gain by improving the home environment
Describe the changes in home environments, behaviors, and weight/BMI of participants in the Healthy Homes/Healthy Families study
Discuss the implications for the use of coaching interventions to change the home environment and caloric intake for weight gain prevention
Keyword(s): Obesity, Community-Based Research (CBPR)
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been working on the Healthy/Homes Healthy Families RCT from the beginning as a research methodologist. I am the statistician on the project as well.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.