Intervention Completion Rates among African Americans in a Randomized Effectiveness Trial for Diet and Physical Activity Changes

Abstract

Background The intervention completion rate is an important metric in behavioral and intervention research; trials with limited intervention completion rates may have reduced internal validity. We examined intervention completion rates among 530 African Americans who had been randomized to an integrated (INT) or disease-specific (DSE) risk education protocol as part of a comparative effectiveness trial from September 2009 to August 2012. Methods The interventions were developed by an academic-community partnership using community-based participatory research. Intervention completion rates were determined based on attendance at all four intervention sessions. Intervention completers were participants who completed all four sessions and non-completers were those who did not complete any session or only completed one to three sessions following randomization. Results 73% of participants were intervention completers and 27% were non-completers. There were no differences in intervention completion based on randomization to INT (72%) or DSE (75%), sociodemographic factors, or BMI in the total sample. Different factors were associated significantly with intervention completion within study groups. Among participants randomized to INT, the odds of intervention completion were greater with higher levels of intrinsic motivation, less exposure to information about diet and cardiovascular disease, and greater BMI. Among participants randomized to DSE, the odds of completing the intervention were associated significantly with older age and greater dietary self-efficacy. Conclusions Many African Americans are likely to complete risk education interventions. Impact Psychological characteristics should be considered when determining intervention completion rates following randomization in behavioral and intervention trials.

Social determinants of family health history collection

“…Additional research is needed to evaluate the impact of FHH education programs on the collection of this information and to identify the most effective setting for delivering these types of programs to men. Recently, we found that African American men were as likely as women to complete a community-based risk education program about cancer and cardiovascular disease (Halbert et al 2014;Wu et al 2013). Community-based programs may be an effective setting for delivering education about the importance of FHH collection and strategies for obtaining this information to men.…”

Conducting Precision Medicine Research with African Americans

“…African American men may be under-represented in clinical research [ 21 ], but there are some examples of successful recruitment of African American men in both genetic and non-genetic studies. Relative to women, African American men had similar rates of participating in a lifestyle intervention that was designed to increase motivation to change diet and physical activity [ 22 ]. Similarly, the African American Hereditary Prostate Cancer (AAHPC) [ 23 ] study enrolled 92 African American high risk families and complete clinical data were available on 154 African American men who had a personal history of prostate cancer [ 24 ].…”

Sistas Inspiring Sistas Through Activity and Support (SISTAS): Study Design and Demographics of Participants

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