Providence’s Miriam Hospital and Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have scored $1.3 million in grant money from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funds will be used to conduct a three-year-long, mobile-enabled study on weight loss after bariatric surgery.

“Very little is known about why some people are more successful than others at keeping weight off after having bariatric surgery,” said Dale Bond, lead researcher and faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at The Miriam Hospital’s Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center. “Behavioral factors are thought to be very influential, but guidelines for behavior changes among bariatric surgery patients are often vague and not well supported by scientific research. Our goal is to collect data to improve behavioral guidelines and help increase weight loss after bariatric surgery.”

Researchers will rely on the wrist-worn health monitoring device ActiGraph and smartphone apps to track a number of inputs.Researchers will rely on the wrist-worn health monitoring device ActiGraph and smartphone apps to track food, physical activity, behavior, mood, hunger, and cravings for around 100 bariatric surgery patients. These patients will be tracked before surgery and four times over the year after surgery. Other information researchers will collect include environmental factors, like foods available to patients and support from family and friends, to assess which factors predict weight loss.

Previously, Dale Bond worked with a colleague Graham Thomas on a similar study that was looking to analyze some of the behaviors that might affect weight loss or gain that is associated with bariatric surgery.

[Via: mobihealthnews]