Combating obesity

Latest innovative approaches to obesity by the USA

The National Institutes of Health is launching a $37 million programme that will use findings from basic research on human behaviour to develop more effective interventions to reduce obesity.  The programme’s studies focus on diverse populations at high risk of being overweight or obese, including Latino and African-American adults, African-American adolescents, low-income populations, pregnant women, and women in the menopausal transition.

The program, Translating Basic Behavioral and Social Science Discoveries into Interventions to Reduce Obesity, will fund interdisciplinary teams of researchers at seven research sites. As the NIH’s Director Francis S. Collins explains, the programme is innovative because ‘This approach differs from previous large clinical trials of behavioral interventions to reduce obesity by placing new emphasis on applying findings from basic behavioural and social sciences to improve behavioural strategies.’

The interventions being developed include creative new approaches to:

• Promote awareness of specific eating behaviors
• Decrease the desire for high-calorie foods
• Reduce stress-related eating
• Increase motivation to adhere to weight loss strategies
• Engage an individual’s social networks and communities to encourage physical activity
• Improve sleep patterns.

Brain scans will also be used to understand brain mechanisms in obesity that might guide the development of new interventions.

The programme is led by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in partnership with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR).

Source: NIH News, 10 December 2009.

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