Intensive weight management in obese women planning a pregnancy.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Intensive weight management in obese women planning a pregnancy. A pilot study. Version 1.
IRAS ID
138794
Contact name
Paul Hardiman
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
JRO
Research summary
Obesity carries serious health risks for pregnant women and their babies. It is therefore important that pregnant women are given an opportunity to lose weight in an effective manner. Indeed the NICE guidelines say:
“Health professionals should use any opportunity, as appropriate, to provide women with a BMI of 30 or more with information about the health benefits of losing weight before becoming pregnant (for themselves and the baby they may conceive). This should include information on the increased health risks their weight poses to themselves and would pose to their unborn child” (NICE 2010: 'Weight management before, during and after pregnancy').
In order to reduce the risk of obesity in pregnancy, diet & lifestyle modification is key. Lifestyle-based interventions, focusing on diet, exercise, and behaviour change therapy, may reduce bodyweight by around 10%. However non-adherence (not sticking to the diet) and dropping out completely from the programme can be a problem, and it is not an uncommon for a third of participants to drop out. It is useful for researchers to be able to identify in advance the numbers likely to drop out, because this allows the researchers to offer extra support to those vulnerable women, thus helping them stick with the programme. One way of identifying the women at risk of drop out is to use a questionnaire based on The Integrative Model of Behaviour Prediction (IMBP).
The principal objective of this study is to observe the uptake and adherence rates to the programme. The secondary objective is to test the IMBP questionnaire. We will use the results of this study to develop a larger study, which will be a randomised trial to assess the effect of this lifestyle modification programme on weight loss, and the reduction in rate of health problems for the mother and her baby.REC name
London - Stanmore Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/0160
Date of REC Opinion
14 Feb 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion