Researcher finds areas with limited local support resources make maintaining weight loss difficult

(COLLEGE STATION, TX) — Obesity is an increasing problem for adult women in rural areas, and a recently published study in the Journal of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics involving a researcher at the Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) School of Rural Public Health asserts that continuing positive lifestyle habits after successful weight loss is difficult in areas with limited local support resources.

“Participants commonly regain much of the lost weight within a year of completing an initial weight loss program,” said Tiffany Radcliff, Ph.D., lead study author and associate professor at the TAMHSC-School of Rural Public Health. “Distance for participants and the fixed costs to offer center-based care can present a barrier to program access in rural areas.”

The study by Dr. Radcliff and her colleagues describes and compares program costs and outcomes for alternative methods to deliver 12-month extended-care lifestyle maintenance programs after an initial six-month weight-loss program. They concluded individual telephone counseling was less expensive and displayed comparable outcomes to that of the in-person group counseling method.

Additional researchers for this study, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, included Linda B. Bobroff, Ph.D., Patricia E. Durning, Ph.D., Michael J. Daniels, D.Sc., Marian C. Limacher, M.D., David M. Janicke, Ph.D., A. Daniel Martin, Ph.D., Michael G. Perri, Ph.D., all of the University of Florida; and Lesley D. Lutes, Ph.D., of East Carolina University.