Background

Healthcare providers play an important role in encouraging healthy behaviors and improving health-related quality of life (HRQoL). They are most effective when they partner with informed, engaged patients.

Objective

To examine the impact of a new health-information technology intervention (FAST-Feedback) that provides patients with immediate, personalized, guideline-based feedback regarding tobacco use, physical activity, and HRQoL, and encourages patients to initiate discussions regarding these topics with their primary care physician.

Design

A pilot, randomized controlled trial clustered by resident physician, with patients as the unit of analysis.

Participants

Resident physicians and their out-patients in a single academic health center between May and October 2011.

Intervention

Patients received (intervention) or did not receive (control) FAST-Feedback prior to the clinical encounter.

Main outcome measures

Primary outcomes were patient reports of initiating any discussions regarding tobacco use, physical activity, and HRQoL. Subgroup analyses examined patient reports of discussions regarding tobacco use, physical activity, and HRQoL, respectively.

Key results

Thirty of the 36 eligible resident physicians (83%) agreed to participate; 173 of their 415 eligible patients (42%) expressed interest in the study and 99 (24%) consented to participate. Compared to controls, a higher percentage of intervention patients reported initiating any discussion with their resident physician, although this difference was not statistically significant (40% vs. 27%; p = 0.12). For subgroup analyses regarding specific topics of discussion, patients in the intervention group reported initiating more discussions regarding mental HRQoL than controls (23% vs. 0%; p = 0.02). There was no difference in patient reports of initiating discussions regarding smoking, physical activity or physical HRQoL.

Conclusions

Providing patients with immediate, personalized, guideline-based feedback prior to the clinical encounter can increase patient-initiated discussions regarding mental HRQoL. Future work should test FAST-Feedback in a larger population and evaluate the impact on tobacco cessation, increased physical activity, and improvements in HRQoL.

Objective: It has been reported that mothers who do not breastfeed are at an increased risk of T2DM, metabolic syndrome, and CVD. We hypothesize that lactation may influence cardio-metabolic risk by altering maternal body composition. We examined the extent to which lactation was associated with regional and total adiposity in a sample of US women 15 years after their last birth. Study Design : Cross-sectional analysis of data provided by 1,268 women aged 45-58 who enrolled in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (1996 -1997). Adiposity was assessed using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. History of lactation was self-reported and categorized into three groups: mothers who breastfed for ≥3 months after every birth, those who discontinued lactation within 3 months of some births, and those who never breastfed. Results: Compared with mothers who breastfed after every birth for at least 3 months, mothers who never breastfed had 0.87 kg greater trunk fat mass (FM), 1.3% greater % trunk FM, 1.3% lower % leg FM, and 0.075 greater trunk to leg FM ratio after adjustment for age, parity, height, years since last birth, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic, lifestyle, psychological, and family history variables, maximum gestational weight gain, and menopausal status. After additional adjustment for current BMI, women who never breastfed had 0.40 kg greater trunk FM and 0.053 greater trunk to leg FM ratio than mothers who breastfed every child for ≥3 months. Similarly, mothers who discontinued lactation within 3 months of some births had 0.28 kg greater trunk FM and 0.87% lower % leg FM than mothers who consistently breastfed. Conclusion : Women who did not breastfeed for at least 3 months after every birth exhibit less favorable body fat distributions 15 years postpartum. These results provide a potential physiologic basis for prior findings that women who do not breastfeed their children face increased risk of diabetes, the metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. Given existing disparities in rates of lactation, obesity and CVD, these findings have great clinical relevance and suggest the need for targeted lactation support for women at risk of cardiovascular disease.