Premium
Do health professionals provide overweight and obese Americans with advice regarding weight control, and what factor affect the practice?
Author(s) -
Yang HsingYu,
Chen Hsinjen
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.25.1_supplement.107.1
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , overweight , weight control , advice (programming) , medicine , environmental health , obesity , health professionals , psychology , health care , endocrinology , political science , computer science , communication , law , programming language
Aims With US nationally representative data, 1) study how often health professionals (HP) provide their overweight (ovwt)/obese patients advice on eating and exercise; 2) test what patient‐, HP characteristics affect the practice. Methods Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) 2004–07 data from 16,050 US adults; logistic reg models tested the predictors. Results Rates of receiving the advice from HP were higher in the ovwt (46% for diet vs 50% for exercise), obese (61% vs 70%) than in normal weight (29% vs 32%). In ovwt/obese patients, the % varied by patient characteristics, eg, sex (women more likely, by 30%, p<0.01), unemployment (OR:0.67(0.55–0.82) in ovwt for diet), family income (OR:1.26(1.01–1.57) in ovwt for diet) and insurance coverage. In the obese, compared to private insurance, uninsured (OR:0.68(0.51–0.91)) and public insurance (0.78 (0.62–0.99)) less likely got advice on diet. Differences existed in patterns of exercise and diet advice. Selected HP characteristics affect the provision of advice: female HP (46 vs 38% in males), HP used same language or had translator (51 vs 26%) more likely gave the advice, but similar by HP specialty. Conclusions Many overweight (50%) and obese (30%) Americans do not get weight control advice from their HP. Some patient and HP characteristics seem to affect HP's practice. Physicians need be encouraged to advise their patients to maintain healthy weight.