525-P: The Influence of Age of on the Weight Loss Outcome of Women in the National Diabetes Prevention Program

Abstract

In the National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) developed by the CDC, participants receive health-coach facilitated education on lifestyle modification to develop better eating and exercise habits with the goal of losing 5-7% weight over the course of a year. Incorrect assumptions about weight loss can lead to reduced participation and low outcomes in DPP. This study aims to determine the truth of common assumptions about weight loss and the impact that such assumptions have on the effectiveness of DPP. A common assumption observed is that women of menopausal age (45-60) find it more difficult to lose weight and we hypothesized that women at the menopausal age will achieve the weight loss goal at a slower rate compared to younger women of pre-menopausal age (18-44) . Weight loss is defined as the difference between initial and final weight as a percentage of initial weight; a positive value indicates weight loss. Effectiveness is defined as the percentage of participants who achieve a specific weight loss threshold. The data used was the number of days until each participant achieved the weight loss goal of 5%. This was divided into two groups: 641 women aged 45-60) , and 278 women aged 18-44. A Students t-test was then performed on the data sets to measure the effect of assumptions about menopause and weight loss. Contrary to the hypothesis, we found that menopausal women to be just as likely to achieve the 5% weight loss goal as pre-menopausal women in the same amount of time. This indicates that the assumption is untrue, however it is a useful assumption in the sense that it can encourage menopausal women to lose weight. Disclosure M.Ottur: None. G.Cooke: None. S.Rajan: None.