The purpose of the Health-Smart for Weight Loss (HSWL) Program is to address the problem of obesity that negatively impacts the health and health-related quality of life of many Black women. Notably, Black women have the highest prevalence of obesity in the U.S. with more than half (56.6%) of Black women experiencing obesity. This disease increases the likelihood of having diabetes and other chronic diseases and decreases quality of life and life expectancy. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all adults who have obesity participate in an evidence-based, intensive, multicomponent behavioral treatment for this disease. Such treatment has been shown to produce clinically significant weight-loss among patients; however, this weight-loss is typically not sustained over time. Health care professionals nationally agree that treatment of obesity should be occurring and evaluated in primary care settings.
The HSWL program is a multi-component, multi-partnered program that is designed to empower participants to take charge of their health under whatever conditions that exist in their lives. The program tests the effectiveness of a culturally sensitive, evidence-based, multi-component, behavioral program for treating obesity called Health-Smart.TM This program will be implemented for 6 months in 20 UF Health Jacksonville primary care clinics by Community Health Workers (CHWs) with Black women patients who have obesity, and followed by either of two physician-implemented behavioral counseling weight loss maintenance programs that are applied quarterly over 12 months to prevent weight gain. Specifically, we will compare the effects on weight-loss and weight-loss maintenance of (1) Health-Smart plus the Patient-Centered, Culturally Sensitive Weight Loss Maintenance Program (PCS-WLM), and (2) Health-Smart plus the Standard Behavioral Weight Loss Maintenance Program (SB-WLM). We expect that (a) the PCS-WLM will result in significantly greater weight-loss and weight-loss maintenance compared to SB-WLM, and (b) that the model used to integrate CHWs into the health care team at each clinic will result in high ratings of this integration by the CHWs and other clinic staff involved with this study. The program is being funded by a $2,099,943, three-year grant from the Patient-Center Outcomes Research Institute.