ABSTRACT
Background: Residency offers opportunities to address obesity-care knowledge gaps, but few curricula exist. We aimed to develop and rigorously test an obesity medicine curriculum for internal medicine (IM) residents. Methods: We conducted a prospective study comparing IM residents' obesity-care self-efficacy between a residency program receiving the curriculum (n=20) and a control program (n=19). From Feb-April 2020, we delivered a curriculum that combined online modules with live case-based discussions on guidelineconcordant obesity care (lifestyle, medications, surgery);enhanced with tools for documentation and patient communication. We determined residents' change in counseling self-efficacy on nutrition, behavior change, anti-obesity medications (AOM), and bariatric surgery on 4-point Likert scales at baseline and 5 months. We also assessed change in self-reported clinical practice habits. We used t-tests to compare mean change in outcomes both within and between groups. Results: Overall, 64% of residents were women and evenly distributed across post-graduate years. Curriculum residents had statistically significant within-group increases in all self-efficacy domains (nutrition 0.8;behavior 1.2;AOM 1.2;surgery 0.9 (p<0.01)) and statistically significant within-group increases in three practice habits (behavior 0.8, AOM 0.8, surgery 0.6 (p<0.02)). Relative to controls, curriculum residents had statistically significant improvements in all self-efficacy domains (between-group differences: nutrition 0.6 (p=0.02);behavior 0.8 (p<0.01);AOM 0.7 (p=0.03);surgery 0.5 (p=0.03)). We found no between-group differences in practice habits. Conclusions: A curriculum increased residents' obesity-care selfefficacy and produced improvements beyond those achieved with usual IM training. While curriculum residents reported increases in practice habits, the between-group changes were not statistically significant - possibly related to COVID19 disruptions. Future studies should determine effect on clinical practice.