Patients benefit from primary care wellness program

(HealthDay)—Patients benefit from the Americans In Motion-Healthy Interventions (AIM-HI) approach to promoting physical activity, healthy eating, and emotional well-being regardless of whether or not family medicine practice office staff use the tools, according to a study published in the July/August issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.

Wilson D. Pace, M.D., from the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network in Leawood, Kan., and colleagues randomized 24 family medicine practices to either an enhanced practice approach in which clinicians and office staff used AIM-HI tools to make personal changes and created a healthy environment or a traditional practice approach in which physicians and staff were trained and asked to use the tools with patients. Blood pressure, body mass index, fasting blood glucose and insulin levels, nuclear magnetic resonance lipoprotein profiles, fitness, dietary intake, physical activity, and emotional well-being were assessed at baseline and at four and 10 months.

The researchers found that, of the 378 patients who completed the study, 10 percent of all patients enrolled lost 5 percent or more of their body weight, and 16.7 percent of completers had a two-point or greater increase in their fitness level. In total, 29.2 percent of those completing the study lost 5 percent or more of their body weight and/or increased their fitness level by two or more points. The two groups had similar outcomes.

"Both patient groups were able to show significant before-after improvements in selected patient-level outcomes," the authors write.

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