Do physicians discuss needed diet and nutrition health topics with adolescents?

PURPOSE: Preventive services guidelines recommend screening all adolescents for diet habits, physical activity and growth, counseling underweight teens about body image and dieting patterns, and counseling overweight or obese teens about dietary habits and exercise. In this study, we assess whether adolescents at risk for overweight or for eating disorders have discussed recommended diet and nutrition topics with their physicians. METHODS: We surveyed 14-18-year-old adolescents who had been seen for well care in primary care pediatric and family medicine practices. Adolescents self-reported their weight, height, body image, dieting habits, and issues they had discussed with their clinicians. Body mass index (BMI) was used to define those "at risk for an eating disorder" (< 5% BMI), "at risk of becoming overweight" (85%-95% BMI), and "overweight" (> 95% BMI). RESULTS: A total of 8384 adolescents completed surveys (72% completion rate). Nearly one-third of adolescents were "at risk" or overweight. Females were less likely to be overweight than males (9.4% vs. 15.7%; p < .001). Although 26.4% were attempting to lose weight, only 12.2% of all teens were actually overweight. Exercise and restricting intake were the preferred methods of weight loss. Physicians routinely discussed adolescents' weight during visits, and were more likely to discuss it with those "at risk" (p < .001). Body image was more often discussed with girls than with boys (52% vs. 44.6%, p < .001) and with those at risk (51.6% vs. 45.5%; p < .001). Discussion of healthy eating and weight loss occurred more often with adolescents "at risk" for becoming overweight (p < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Many adolescents are at risk for being overweight or are currently overweight, confirming the importance of clinicians discussing diet and nutrition health topics with all teens. Many adolescents also misclassify their body image, and hence perceive their body image to be different from their actual BMI; clinicians should discuss body image with all adolescents, not just those at risk for eating disorders. Better interventions are needed to promote healthy nutrition and physical activity to all adolescents.

Recruitment of physician offices for an office-based adolescent smoking cessation study.

Physician office settings play an important role in tobacco cessation intervention. However, few tobacco cessation trials are conducted at these sites, in part because of the many challenges associated with recruiting community physician offices into research. The present study identified and implemented strategies for recruiting physician offices into a randomized clinical trial of tobacco screening and cessation interventions with adolescent patients. A total of 30 community physicians participated in focus groups to elicit their perceptions of facilitators of and barriers to initial engagement of physician practices and the subsequent enrollment of the practices in long-term research projects. Physicians identified facilitators such as (a) the involvement of office staff in the recruitment process and (b) on-site presentations of the study's background and aims. Some of the barriers identified were time commitment concerns and the lack of incentives in exchange for participation. These focus group findings were then integrated with theory-based and empirically driven recruitment strategies for a 12-month randomized tobacco intervention trial with adolescent patients. Of 185 office practices approached to participate (screened from a pool of 273 practices), 103 agreed to on-site presentations of the study. Subsequently, almost all of the practices (101) that received the presentation agreed to enroll in the study. Conclusions are that (a) recruitment is a multicomponent process, (b) the processes of communication, engagement, and enrollment must be carefully planned and implemented to achieve maximal results, and (c) the development of effective strategies for recruiting health care provider practices presents an important infrastructure for testing adolescent smoking cessation interventions.