Docs less likely to advise black patients on weight loss

Regardless of the physician's race, obese black patients are less likely to receive counseling about diet and exercise than their white counterparts, according to a new study published online in the journal Obesity.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore analyzed data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys from 2005 to 2007--a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of physician office visits. The data included 2,231 visits of black and white obese patients, ages 20 or older, visiting black and white family practice and internal medicine physicians.

To the team's surprise, it did not observe a positive association between patient-physician race concordance and weight-related counseling. Rather, black patients who visited white doctors had less chance of being counseled on exercise than white patients seeing white doctors. Further, black patients who saw black doctors were also less likely to get advice on weight reduction than white patients who saw black doctors.

Among proposed reasons for the discrepancy, researchers offered that doctors may have less faith in black patients to follow advice or that black physicians may be trying to be culturally sensitive to their black patients. As we've reported previously, physicians in general are poorly trained to provide weight-loss counseling.

According to study authors, further research is needed to understand how to improve obese patient counseling, particularly among the black population.

To learn more:
- read the article on UPI.com
- see the piece in the Los Angeles Times
- check out the study abstract in Obesity

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