1. Senior Research Project
Obesity
By Peter Cheng

2. Introduction
Obesity is becoming a major health concern in our nation due to following 3 reasons:
- Prevalence increasing each year
- associated w/ many chronic diseases
- healthcare cost of obesity is rising each year

3. Prevalence
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted 4 studies:
NHANES I:
NHANES II:
NHANES III:
NHANES

4. NHANES Results NHANES II NHANES III NHANES 1999-2000
47 % of US population overweight/obese
NHANES III
56 % of US population overweight/obese
NHANES
64 % of US population overweight/obese

5. Prevalence Comparison

6. Health Consequences Obesity is related to:
Cardiovascular: CAD, stroke, HTN
Endocrine: DM2, Dyslipidemia, Infertility
Resp: sleep apnea
GI: gallstones
MS: OA
cancer (endometrial, breast, prostate, colon)

7. Health Consequences
Each year 300,000 people die of obesity related diseases
Making it the 2nd leading cause of preventable death, just behind smoking

8. Healthcare Cost
Imagine the amount of time, effort, and money we put in each day in FCC treating pts w/ DM, HTN, lipid
Center of Disease & Control released a report stating that in 2003, cost of obesity related healthcare expenditure was: 75 billion dollars

9. Research Objective Prevalence of obesity in our pt population
Perception of these pts on their obesity
What pts are doing for their obesity
Patient’s level of knowledge on obesity
Ideal way of outreach without offending pts

10. Method
A questionaire was randomly given to FCC patient, after our nurses record their medical record numer, age, sex, weight, and height
Exclude pts under age 20 over over 80
No abbreviations were used on questionaire

11. Questionaire: stats
Age
Sex
Weight
Height

12. Perception Do you think you are overweight?
What do you think your ideal weight is?

13. What are pts doing On average, how many hrs per wk do you exercise?
What kind of exercises do you do the most?
- run, walk, swim, bike, rollerskate, basketball, aerobics, weighttrainning, others

14. What are pts doing: cont
Have you tried to lose weight before?
If you tried to lose wt before, what was the most amount of wt that you were able to lose?
If you were to lose weight, which method are you willing to use consistently?
Diet, exercise, meds, herbal products, surgery

15. Pt Knowledge What is your education background?
Which of the following conditions do you think is associated with obesity?
DM2, HTN, OA, Strokes, MI, infertility, dyslipidemia, venous insufficeincy, anemia, bad vision

16. Pt knowledge: cont
Do you think Americans in general are becoming more overweight than before?
Do you think that obesity is an important health issue in our society?
What do you think causes obesity? Genetic, diet, lack of exercise, others

17. Info and Outreach
Where do you get the most information about weight lose from?
Your doctor, books/mags, TV infomercials, friends, others
Do you feel offended when your doctor tells you that you have to lose weight?

18. Info and Outreach: cont
Would you like to learn more about obesity and weight loss from your doctor?
What do you think your doctor can do to help you lose weight?
- oral Instructions, handouts/pamphlets, medications, others

19. Result General figures: Number of Patient: 101
Age: range 23-71, average of 51
Sex: male 28 (28%), female 73 (72%)

20. Prevalence of Obesity Avg height: 63.98 Avg weight: 194.5
Average BMI: 33.32

21. Prevalence of Obesity 80% Prevalence of pt overweight (BMI 25-29.9)
27%
Prevalence of pt obese (BMI >30)
53%
Prevalence of pt overweight/obese (BMI>25)
80%

22. US vs RCRMC

23. Prevalence Prevalence of overweight/obesity in male
84%
Prevalence of overweight/obesity in female
80%

24. Pt’s own perception Do overweight pts know that they are overweight?
Ideal weight difference:
- Pt’s own ideal weight minus their true ideal weight (using BMI of 25): even if they know they are overweight, do they know by how much?

25. Pt’s own perception of those who are overweight:
82% of pt think they are overweight (BMI: 37)
18% of pt thinks that they are NOT overweight (BMI: 31)

26. Pt’s own ideal weight
Patient’s own ideal weight comes out to BMI of 26

27. What pts are doing Exercises: avg 2 hrs/wk
Walk (65%), Bike (11%), swim (8 %), wt training (5%), gardening (4%), aerobics (3%), Run (1%), basketball (1%), play with pets (1%)

28. What pts are doing 78% of pt tried to lose wt, 22% did not
Those who tried to lose wt, max amount of wt lost was average of 25.7 pounds
If pt was to lose wt, they prefer:
- 64% prefer exercise, 61% prefer diet, 20% prefer medication, 15% prefer herbal products, and 15% prefer surgery

29. Pt knowledge on Obesity
Education
- none (6%), elementary (13%), middle school (14%), high school (47%), College of above (21%)

30. Patient Education

31. Patient Source of Information on Obesity

32. Pt knowledge on Obesity
More Americans are obese than ever?
7% says No
93% says Yes
Is obesity an important health issue?

33. Pt knowledge on Obesity
Obesity can cause which?
DM (38%), HTN (40%), OA (18%), stroke (30%), MI (39%), infertility (8%), dyslipidemia (49%), venous insuff (9%), anemia (4%), vision (7%)
Number of pt who got all of them right: 1

34. Patient Knowledge on Effects of Obesity

35. Pt knowledge on cause of obesity
What is the cause of obesity:
43% says genetic, 67% says diet, 82% says lack of exerciseds
Only 26% of pt think it is all three factors

36. Outreach Preference
Are you offended when your doctor tell you to loose weight?
98%: No
2%: Yes
Would you like to learn more about obesity from your doctor?
17 %: No
83 % : Yes

37. Outreach Preferences
What do you think your doctor can do to help you lose weight? 73
Oral instructions: 58%
Handout/pamphlets: 49%
Medications: 40%

38. Conclusion
Prevalence of obesity among RCRMC pt population is significantly higher than national average
82% vs 64%
Average BMI of our pt population: 33.3

39. Conclusion
Majority of overweight pts know that they are overweight; however they underestimate the amount of weight loss they need
The average of patient’s own ideal weight is BMI of 26

40. Conclusion Our patient population do not have enough exercise hours:
Only 2 hrs per wk

41. Conclusion
68% of pt have education high school or above, yet their knowledge of obesity are still very lacking. More than ½ of them do not realize the important health implications of obesity.

42. Conclusion
Vast majority of pts are NOT offended when doctors tell them to lose weight; in fact, they would like to learn more about weight loss from their doctors.

43. Discussion What can be contributing to obesity in pts?
Patients do not know their true ideal weight
They don’t know the long term health implications of obesity, thus they lack motivation
They do not know the correct method to lose weight
They just can’t/won’t start diet & exercise

44. Discussion What can we do to better serve our patients?
Patients are more receptive than we think; they want to know more about losing weight
Discuss with them their ideal weight
Educate pts on health consequences of obesity
Go into more detail about what to do with diet and how much exercises they need

45. Discussion What can be improved on this study:
larger patient sample size
Include ethnicity
Questions on diet intake
A more accurate prevalence can be obtained from random patient chart review