#498: The PROPEL Trial & Weight Loss Interventions in Primary Care – John Apolzan, PhD
Sigma Nutrition Radio
Danny Lennon
4.8 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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About this Episode:
The PROPEL (Promoting Successful Weight Loss in Primary Care in Louisiana) trial was a cluster-randomized weight loss trial, specifically tailored to address the pressing health concerns of an underserved population in Louisiana, where obesity rates have reached alarming levels.
The core of the intervention comprises a pragmatic, high-intensity lifestyle-based obesity treatment program, thoughtfully designed to be integrated within primary care settings. Over a 24-month duration, this multi-component weight loss program is delivered by skilled health coaches who are embedded in primary care clinics, with the aim of instigating substantial and sustainable weight loss outcomes.
In this study, 803 participants were enrolled, of whom 67% identified as Black and 84% as female, thereby ensuring a diverse representation. The research design randomized 18 clinics, allocating them equally into two groups: usual care and an Intensive Lifestyle Intervention (ILI). The usual care group continued to receive their customary primary care, serving as the benchmark against which the ILI's efficacy will be measured.
In this episode we have the opportunity to delve deeper into the intricacies of the PROPEL trial and gain insights from one of its lead researchers, Dr. John Apolzan of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 498 of the podcast. I'm your host, Danny Lennon, and you are very welcome to the show. |
| 0:25.1 | Today I'm going to be talking with Dr. John Apollzon, who is an associate professor at Pennington |
| 0:30.4 | Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, where he's based in the |
| 0:35.0 | Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism Department. And Dr. Paul Zun is a |
| 0:39.0 | nutrition science whose research focuses in on the overseeing and managing of human clinical |
| 0:44.5 | intervention trials that involve not only nutritional but also physical activity and body weight |
| 0:51.0 | outcomes. And we're going to focus in on a couple of these. One in particular today, |
| 0:55.6 | a body of work where there's been human intervention trials, but with a pragmatic look, as we'll |
| 1:00.9 | discuss. And Dr. Paul Zun's work has stretched across many important trials, ones that you probably |
| 1:06.5 | would have heard on the podcast previously, like the diabetes prevention program or a number of the |
| 1:11.6 | calorie trials, for example, if you heard our episode with Eric Ravison, and many other important |
| 1:17.2 | piece of work. Today we're going to focus in on the Propel trial, which Propel is an acronym |
| 1:23.4 | for promoting successful weight loss in primary care in Louisiana. And the name probably gives |
| 1:30.9 | you some idea of what it's discussing. We're obviously talking about weight loss trials in primary |
| 1:36.4 | care settings, specifically in Louisiana, and seeing what can be done there. So we're going to go |
| 1:41.4 | through some of the specifics of that, what was laid out, the goals of it, some of the findings, but also some of the interesting nuances to that and what |
| 1:49.4 | that might mean for future approaches. So that is our episode coming today. If you want to get |
| 1:55.8 | detailed study notes to this particular episode, as well as a transcript to the full episode, |
| 2:00.5 | you can do so by |
| 2:01.6 | being a member of Sigma Nutrition Premium. This is our premium exclusive membership, where you |
| 2:08.1 | get additional features such as our study notes and transcripts, but also additional podcast episodes. |
| 2:14.6 | So each month you'll get a bonus special episode that will only be available on |
... |
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