Telephone Interventions for Physical Activity and Dietary Behavior Change

Optimizing Diabetes Self-care in Low Literacy and Minority Populations—Problem-solving, Empowerment, Peer Support and Technology-based Approaches

“…22 A systematic review of telephone-delivered diet and physical activity interventions showed significant positive outcomes for interventions as brief as 3-6 months long with six or more phone contacts. 23 Another randomized study of 636 patients receiving a multi-component telephone-delivered behavioral self-management intervention, home blood pressure (BP) monitoring, combined intervention, or usual care 24 showed a significant BP-lowering effect from the combined intervention, while the separate interventions showed no difference. A telehealth study of 41 patients with diabetes used a care coordination approach to monitor BP, lipids, and medications, then categorize them as high or moderate cardiovascular risk.…”

Results from the dissemination of an evidence-based telephone-delivered intervention for healthy lifestyle and weight loss: the Optimal Health Program

“…Higher dropout rates in the beginning of the program indicate that the ability to implement the full 12-month intervention to all participants was challenging. This is an important issue given evidence from two recent systematic reviews of telephone-delivered physical activity and/or dietary behavior change interventions that indicate that delivery of longer term interventions (i.e., of at least 6-months duration) is associated with improved outcomes [9,14]. It suggests that other modalities for providing ongoing intervention contacts should be evaluated [72].…”

“…Thus, effective and broad reaching interventions to promote regular physical activity and healthy eating as well as modest weight loss are required. Mediated (non-face-to-face) intervention delivery in the form of print, Internet, and telephone [9][10][11] offers a potentially flexible, convenient, and costeffective means of providing the repeated contacts necessary to achieve and maintain behavior change [12]. Telephone delivery is the most widely researched of these modalities to date and remains the most accessible [9,12].…”

“…Mediated (non-face-to-face) intervention delivery in the form of print, Internet, and telephone [9][10][11] offers a potentially flexible, convenient, and costeffective means of providing the repeated contacts necessary to achieve and maintain behavior change [12]. Telephone delivery is the most widely researched of these modalities to date and remains the most accessible [9,12]. Such interventions are distinctly promising given their potential to be adopted by health organizations that operate telephone information and support centers [12,13].…”

“…A strong randomized trial evidence base supports efficacy of telephone-delivered interventions targeting physical activity and/or dietary change and weight loss in a range of settings and target populations [9,10,[14][15][16][17][18][19]. In order to achieve their potential public health impact, such interventions need to be implemented and evaluated in diverse community practice settings [20][21][22][23].…”