A Standardized Shipboard Weight Control Program

Superimposed on obesity's risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), Navy personnel who fail to meet Physical Readiness Test (PRT) and body weight standards are subject to potentially serious administrative sanctions. Obesity also has been projected to cost the Navy considerable dollars for inpatient bed days and other personnel expenses, but the economic impact of obesity and its sequelae in the Navy has never been quantified. The Navy's current remedial obesity treatment program is not standardized, and it typically fails to bring the majority of participants within weight standards. Moreover, the impact of a ship's deployment on a weight loss program is not known. The hypothesis of this study is that a standardized multi-faceted, lifestyle modification approach to weight loss can be implemented onboard ship, and that it will more effectively enable compliance with weight and physical readiness standards, reduce risk factors for CVD, and result in lower obesity-related expenses than the current command-level remedial program. The 80 individuals assigned to the USS ENTERPRISE upon its 6-month Middle East deployment who failed their previous PRT due to excessive body fatness will be stratified by working group and randomly assigned to: 1) an experimental treatment of weekly sessions on diet, behavior modification, psychosocial issues, plus the current command level program of exercise; or 2) a usual care control treatment comprised of the existing command level program of exercise alone. Body weight, PRT standards, CVD risk factors, and personal, environmental and economic factors will be analyzed by multiple regression, multivariate analysis of variance, and decision analytic techniques. The physical readiness and economic implications of this research are important to the Navy because of their potential to impact Navy policy, the health and well-being of its personnel, and the Navy's ability to meet mission requirements.

Final report is available on NTRL: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2010103...