University of Sydney Describes Findings in Health and Medicine (Healthy Weight for Life programme: Evaluating the practice and effectiveness of a weight loss maintenance programme in the private health insurance setting)

2019 SEP 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators publish new report on Health and Medicine. According to news reporting originating in Camperdown, Australia, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Australian private health insurers are increasingly involved in the delivery of chronic disease management programmes to their members, recognising the importance of decreasing and managing lifestyle risk factors and the impact such factors have on health service utilisation. One such secondary prevention programme is the Healthy Weight for Life programme, an intensive weight loss and lifestyle modification programme that has been designed for overweight and obese private health insurance members in Australia.”

Financial support for this research came from The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the University of Sydney, “Together with the insurer, the Healthy Weight for Life service provider developed and implemented a long-term maintenance programme that supports participants who complete the Healthy Weight for Life programme to maintain the weight loss they achieved during the programme. Various studies have shown that evidence-based weight management programmes can be effective; however, the results may vary in different contexts. This article presents the evaluation rationale and framework designed to assess the process and impact of the long-term maintenance programme on weight loss maintenance, other health-related benefits and participants’ experience with the programme. The evaluation will comprise a number of inter-related sub-studies balancing evaluation of programme effectiveness and implementation.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “The maintenance programme presented a unique opportunity for researchers to partner with private health insurance and a service provider to assess a real-world programme in the under-researched area of weight loss maintenance in this setting and emphasises the importance of evaluating such programmes given the potential the private health insurance context has in the future delivery of health care.”

For more information on this research see: Healthy Weight for Life programme: Evaluating the practice and effectiveness of a weight loss maintenance programme in the private health insurance setting. Sage Open Medicine, 2019;7():205031211987381.

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting B. McGill, University of Sydney, Sydney School of Public Health, Prevention Research Collaboration, Charles Perkins Centre, Camperdown, NSW, Australia. Additional authors for this research include B.J. O’Hara, A.C. Grunseit, A. Bauman, L. Lawler and P. Phongsavan.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1177/2050312119873814. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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