National Survey of Energy Balance Related Care among Primary Care Physicians

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The goal of the National Cancer Institute's Physician Survey of Practices on Diet, Physical Activity, and Weight Control is to obtain current, nationally representative data on primary care physicians' (PCP's) characteristics, knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to services provided for diet, physical activity and weight control. Data from the survey will be used to profile existing physician practice, understand barriers to counseling and referral, and to inform methods for improving the utilization of these services for adults and children. The survey supports and furthers the work of the NCI, NIH, and DHHS to monitor and evaluate providers' cancer control knowledge, attitudes, and practices and their impact on population health. It also helps enhance understanding of data collected in national surveys of the general population supported by NCI. Further, it will enable monitoring of progress toward achieving DHHS goals, NIH obesity research plans, and NCI energy balance research priorities related to improving diet, physical activity and weight control among adults and children. There are three major aims of the survey. The first is to develop a national baseline on the use of energy balance risk assessment, counseling and referral services in physician practice. This will help understand current practices. The second aim is to identify the characteristics of physicians who routinely incorporate these activities in patient care in order to plan new initiatives to spread these practices more widely within the physician community. As part of this aim, the survey investigates physician attitudes, their health status and behaviors, as well as their knowledge of guidelines related to diet, physical activity and weight. The third and final aim is to understand PCPs' practice characteristics (e.g., the use of electronic medical records, reminders, and practice profiles) and system factors (e.g., reimbursement practices, availability of referral sources, and financial incentives) that support and/or otherwise influence energy-balance counseling activities. Due to the complexity of the topic, the need to minimize respondent burden, and the need to appropriately survey physicians who treat different patient populations, the survey is comprised of three questionnaires. Two are Physician Questionnaires respectively targeting 1200 PCPs who primarily treat adults (400 internists, 400 obstetricians/gynecologists, and 400 family physicians) and 800 PCPs who primarily treat children (400 pediatricians and 400 family physicians). The third questionnaire focuses on practice and systems issues and will be completed by 2000 PCPs or proxies (e.g. practice administrator, nurse, physician's assistant, office manager) in the same practices receiving an Adult or Child Questionnaire. The Adult, Child, and Administrative Stucture Questionnaires are all administered by mail, and the goal is to obtain a total of 4000 completes.