[FOR EMBARGOED RELEASE Wednesday, April 7]
Contacts:
For Michaela Kiernan’s study: mkiernan@stanford.edu
For Paul Estabrook’s study: estabrkp@vt.edu, 540-857-6664
For Amy Gorin’s study: amy.gorin@uconn.edu, 860-634-1925
A New Look at Social Support for Long-Term Weight Management
SEATTLE, WA - The role of social support has long been considered an essential component of standard behavioral weight-loss programs. In these programs, core modules typically focus on encouraging obese individuals to elicit positive social support and to manage sabotage from one’s family and friends. However, Michaela Kiernan, PhD, Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine, said, “Overall, family and friend support for lifestyle change are rare for women starting a weight-loss program. While these findings may be initially discouraging news, the perceived lack of social support at the start of a program suggests there is room for the design of innovative social support strategies tailored to vulnerable subgroups in future programs.”
Despite the widespread and longstanding inclusion of such modules, surprisingly little research has systematically evaluated the role or success of social support strategies for weight management. To move the field forward, three issues need to be addressed: (1) the inclusion of psychometrically strong measures that could eventually be used by researchers to assess the role of social support as a moderator (who does well) or mediator (why does it work) in future interventions; (2) the consideration of multi-level elements of social support – ranging from individual perceptions of social support to the influence of social capital and social cohesion within social groups such as worksites – that may be fruitful avenues for future interventions; and (3) the design and implementation of well-controlled randomized clinical trials to explicitly test the long-term efficacy of innovative social support interventions for weight management.
In a symposium on Thursday, April 8th (9:00-10:30 a.m.), three speakers will consider these issues. In the first presentation, Dr. Kiernan will describe the psychometrics and initial levels of perceived social support and sabotage for healthy eating and physical activity from family and friends (8 scales) among 267 overweight/obese women in a randomized weight-loss trial. Internal consistency was excellent for support scales, less so for sabotage. Qualitative data revealed that women experienced sabotage instances not captured by original scale items (e.g., criticism from family). Overall, most women never or rarely experienced support for healthy eating and activity from family (78% and 77%) or from friends (90% and 88%).
Paul Estabrooks, PhD, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech will describe the existence of relationships among worksite cohesion, social capital, coworker support, and worksite policy among 1293 employees from 19 worksites. Employees completed validated measures of worksite social capital and a multidimensional conceptualization of worksite cohesion (i.e., individual attractions to the social (IAS) and task (IAT); group integration social (GIS) and task (GIT)). Seven items were used to assess coworker support and worksite policy that would support weight loss. All dimensions of worksite cohesion were related modestly related to worksite social capital. Worksite cohesion dimensions contributed to the variance in social capital, and social capital contributed to the variance in perceived policy support for weight loss. However, only task GIT contributed to the variance in perceived support from coworkers for weight loss. “These results provide the impetus for new and different intervention targets for worksite weight loss programs expanding our knowledge and interest beyond individual level support from coworkers,” said Dr. Estabrooks.
Amy Gorin, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut said, “The comprehensive home environment program, which emphasized partner support, resulted in better weight losses for participants and had the added benefit of producing sizeable weight losses in partners.” The 6-month results of this clinical trial designed to test the initial efficacy of recruiting support partners from the home environment to support their own and their partner’s weight loss efforts will be presented by Melissa Crane, MA from the University of North Carolina. Spouses and other socially connected individuals tend to gain weight at similar rates and may be positively influenced by each other’s weight loss efforts; however, most adult behavioral weight loss programs target only individuals. This study examined the impact of enrolling dyads of overweight/obese adults from within the same home into a comprehensive, home environment focused weight loss program.
The study recruited 201 overweight/obese adults with an overweight/obese adult partner from the same home. Participants were randomized to standard behavioral weight loss treatment (SBT) or to SBT plus changes to the physical and social home environment (SBT+Home). All participants received 6 months of weekly meetings and 12 months of bi-monthly meetings. SBT partners were provided one weight loss session and then seen only at assessments; SBT+Home partners were expected to attend all treatment meetings and set weight loss goals. Greater weight losses were seen in SBT+Home than SBT participants. SBT+Home partners also lost more weight than SBT partners. “Our results suggest that it is feasible to enroll adult dyads from the same household into behavioral weight loss treatment” said Dr. Gorin.
Audie Autienza, PhD, from the National Cancer Institute in Washington DC, and who is currently on detail to the NIH Office of the Director, will serve as discussant given his expertise in this area.
The Society of Behavioral Medicine is a multidisciplinary organization of clinicians, educators and scientists dedicated to promoting the study of the interactions of behavior with biology and the environment and the application of that knowledge to improve the health and well being of individuals, families, communities and populations.
www.sbm.org
Editor’s notes:
This study was presented during the 2010 Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) from April 7-10 in Seattle, Washington. However, it does not necessarily reflect the policies or the opinion of the SBM.
###
