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Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research 2007 Saward Lecture

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Making longer-term lifestyle changes lowers rates of high blood pressure and risk of heart disease

What's New - Weight Loss Maintenance

Losing Weight is the first step. Keeping the weight off is the real goal.

Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research Wins $7.3 Million Grant to Test New Ways to Help Americans Keep Weight Off

(PORTLAND, Ore.) - Nearly two-thirds of adult Americans - about 129 million people - are overweight or obese. Obesity among adults in this country, now at 30 percent, has doubled in the last 20 years. Overweight in children and adolescents, now at nearly 15 percent, has tripled in this same time period. Obesity in all age groups is expected to double again in the next 30 years. The health risks of overweight and obesity - diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease are the most common - have major economic consequences. The yearly costs attributed to obesity in the United States are now more than $100 billion, and they account for 5.5 to 7 percent of total annual health care expenditures. 

To help solve this national health problem, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has launched a major new study that tackles one of the hardest aspects of weight loss - keeping off lost weight. The study, called the Weight Loss Maintenance Trial (WLM), will take place at four clinical sites across the nation. Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research (CHR) is one of the four clinical sites and also serves as the study's coordinating center. The other clinical sites are Duke University (Durham, NC), Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), and The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes (Baltimore, MD).

The study will take place in two phases. Phase I, a 5-month weight loss program, will involve 1,600 men and women (400 at each site). Phase II will try to help participants who lose nine or more pounds in Phase I keep the weight off for 2 1/2 years. The study is now seeking participants, who must be age 25 or older, overweight or obese, and taking medication to control high blood pressure and/or high blood cholesterol.

"Many people can and do lose weight, but few people successfully lose weight long-term," says Patricia Elmer, PhD, principal investigator for the WLM clinical site at CHR. "To keep weight off, people need to learn how to change the behaviors that caused them to gain excess weight. Our new study will test two promising behavioral change methods to help people keep lost weight off for the rest of their lives, especially people who are at high risk for heart disease and other serious conditions. The good news we have to offer people is this: We all learned our unhealthy behaviors, so we all have the power within ourselves to learn healthy behaviors."

In Phase I of WLM, participants will receive an intensive five-month diet and physical activity program. They will be encouraged to follow the DASH eating plan, which has been shown to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. DASH is high in fiber and low in saturated fat, cholesterol and total fat, and emphasizes fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products. They will also keep food and fitness dairies to monitor their diet and physical activity.

Participants who lose nine pounds or more will be invited to enroll in Phase II, which lasts 2 1/2 years. Participants in Phase II will be randomly assigned to one of three different weight loss maintenance programs:

• A self-directed program that includes an annual meeting with a nutrition expert (self-directed/usual care)
• Monthly contacts with nutrition experts, including telephone calls and face-to-face meetings
• An Internet-based, interactive computer program that is individually tailored to help participants keep their weight off. Participants can use the program as often as they wish and from wherever they have Internet access. They will receive weekly e-mail messages about their progress as well as reminders via an interactive voice phone system to log onto the study's web site and respond to e-mail messages.

People who are interested in more information or in joining the study can call the Center for Health Research at (503) 499-5766, log on to our web site at www.wlmtrial.org , or send an e-mail to wlm@kpchr.org.

Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research, founded in 1964, is a not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to advance knowledge to improve health.

Kaiser Permanente Northwest is a prepaid, group practice health care organization serving the health care needs of more than 450,000 people in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

For more infomation contact:
Terry Fitzpatrick (503) 335-6602 or
Jim Gersbach (503) 831-4820

Released: June 25, 2003