Miriam, Brown launch weight control registry

Aiming to combat an “epidemic” of pediatric obesity, researchers at The Miriam Hospital and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University have launched a new national study to help better understand how teenagers lose weight and how they keep it off.
About 16 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are overweight or obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number has tripled since 1980.
The new Adolescent Weight Control Registry, led by Rena Wing and Elissa Jelalian, is the pediatric partner to the National Weight Control Registry, the largest prospective study of long-term successful weight loss maintenance in the country.
The adult registry, which was developed to help identify and study the characteristics of individuals who have succeeded at long-term weight loss, is currently tracking more than 5,000 adults who have lost significant amounts of weight and kept it off for long periods of time.
The adolescent study will recruit young people in Rhode Island and across the country – ages 14 to 20 – who have lost more than 10 pounds and maintained that weight loss for at least one year. Participants will be asked to complete questionnaires and be interviewed.
“The major challenge in treating obesity for teens and adults is not only losing weight but keeping it off,” said Wing, director of the Miriam’s Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center and a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown.
“There is very little research on effective weight control strategies for teens,” Wing added, “and the research that has been done has focused on the actual weight loss itself, not the strategies that help teens successfully maintain that weight loss and avoid regain.”
Jelalian, a child psychologist with the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center and the WCDRC and an associate professor of psychiatry at Brown, noted that teens are often dealing with additional stressors, such as peer pressure, teasing and low self-esteem.
“This information could ultimately lead to improved and more effective obesity treatment programs for adolescents,” Jelalaian said.