Developed by Yale researchers, the weight-specific quality of life measure aims to provide a more comprehensive, stigma-free assessment of weight loss among veterans.
Carlos Salcerio
Collaborating journalist
Ariane de Gennaro, illustration editor
Yale School of Medicine researchers have developed a new weight loss measure for veterans in conjunction with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Developed as an alternative to body mass index, the measure has been called the “Weight and Food Quality of Life Scale”. The WE-QOL scale aims to assess the interface of weight and health in a nuanced way. It incorporates multiple assessment factors, including personal care and daily activities, emotional and social distress, physical conditions, and concerns about appearance.
“I don’t want to underestimate, you know how big of a breakthrough this is,” said Christopher Ruser, associate professor of general medicine at YSM and chief of primary care at West Haven’s multidisciplinary weight management program. GOES. “Even though it doesn’t end up being the final scale, it’s a way of asking this question, how our patients experience the healthcare setting as it relates to weight.”
Currently, many healthcare professionals rely on body mass index measurements to determine weight-related impacts on daily living. BMI measurement, however, is a limited representation of how weight influences quality of life, the researchers said.
“BMI doesn’t necessarily directly track obesity-related diseases,” said Robin Masheb, professor of psychiatry and director of the Veterans Diet and Weight Initiative. “And what we’ve found is that weighing patients in healthcare leads to weight stigma, which instead of motivating people to lose weight has done the opposite.”
The WE-QOL scale seeks to fill in some of these gaps. While BMI focuses only on the physical aspect of health, WE-QOL is a more comprehensive measure that considers the broader impact of weight on a person’s well-being.
“We sought to develop a more nuanced veteran health metric than BMI that could capture the effect of weight and diet on veterans’ quality of life,” said Eugenia Buta, a biostatistics researcher who contributed to the initiative.
Understanding how weight affects specific areas of a patient’s life helps healthcare providers develop more effective treatments and interventions for weight-related issues, while helping individuals make positive lifestyle changes. life. This may lead to the development of more evidence-based approaches to target specific weight-related issues and improve overall individual well-being.
The metric consists of eight items that assess the impact of weight on various aspects of daily life. Domains include physical activity, self-care, daily responsibilities, public distress, physical discomfort, emotional distress, and shame or guilt. Items in these domains are ranked on a five-point scale, where patients rate how much they think their weight impacts a certain domain on a scale of zero, meaning weight has no impact , to four, indicating that weight has an impact on this area. couldn’t be worse.
The development and testing of the WE-QOL scale involved a mixed-methods approach. First, the researchers conducted a literature review and identified existing measures of weight-related quality of life. Next, the researchers sought to assess the psychometric properties of the WE-QOL. For this purpose, the researchers used the results of the WE-QOL and compared them with the relevant results of the questionnaires on BMI, binge eating disorder, food pathology and physical activity. The results between the WE-QOL scale and the individual questionnaires showed strong similarities, indicating that the WE-QOL scale correctly assessed these factors.
Subsequently, the study was administered to a convenience sample of 213 veterans attempting to lose weight. However, Ruser stressed that the scale still needs to be tested on a larger scale, which is a goal Masheb’s future research seeks to achieve.
Ruser called on other doctors to prepare for how metrics could change patient care.
“Be prepared for the conversation this will open up,” Ruser said. “Lead, educate yourself and be prepared to deal with what comes out of this conversation in a very positive way.”
The Veterans Health Administration is the largest healthcare system in the United States.