Effect of training on adoption of cancer prevention nutrition-related activities by primary care practices: results of a randomized, controlled study

Abstract

Objective: The National Cancer Institute (NCI) developed a manual to guide primary care practices in structuring their office environment and routine visits so as to enhance nutrition screening, advice/referral, and follow-up for cancer prevention. The adoption of the manual's recommendations by primary care practices was evaluated by examining two strategies: physician training on how to implement the manual's recommendations versus simple mailing of the manual. This article reports on the results of a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of these two strategies.

Design: A three-arm, randomized, controlled study.

Setting: Free-standing primary care physician practices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Intervention: Each study practice was randomly assigned to one of three groups. The training group practices were invited to send one member from their practice of their choosing to a 3-hour "train-a-trainer" workshop, the manual-only-group practices were mailed the nutrition manual, and the control group practices received no intervention. For training group practices, training was provided in the four major components of the nutrition manual: how to organize the office environment to support cancer prevention nutrition-related activities; how to screen patient adherence to the NCI dietary guidelines; how to provide dietary advice/referral; and how to implement a patient follow-up system to support patients in making changes in their nutrition-related behaviors.

Measurements: The primary outcomes of the study were derived from two evaluation instruments. The observation instrument documented the tools and procedures recommended by the nutrition manual and adopted in patient charts and the office environment. The in-person structured interview evaluated the physician and staff's self-reported nutrition-related activities reflecting the nutrition manual's recommendations. Data from these two instruments were used to construct four adherence scores corresponding to the areas: office organization, nutrition screening, nutrition advice/referral, and patient follow-up.

Main results: The adoption of the manual's recommendations was highest among the practices in the training group as reflected by their higher adherence scores. They organized their office ( P =.005) and screened their patients regarding their eating habits ( P =.046) significantly more closely to the recommendations of the nutrition manual than practices in the manual-only group. However, despite being the highest in compliance, the training group practices were only 54.9% adherent to the manual's recommendations regarding nutrition advice/referral, and 28.5% adherent to its recommendations on office organization, 23.5% adherent to its recommendations on nutrition screening, and 14.6% adherent to its patient follow-up recommendations.

Conclusions: Primary care practices exposed to the nutrition manual in a training session adopted more of the manual's recommendations. Specifically, practices invited to training were more likely to perform nutrition screening and to structure their office environment to be conducive to providing nutrition-related services for cancer prevention. The impact of the training was moderate and not statistically significant for nutrition advice/referral or patient follow-up, which are important in achieving long-term dietary changes in patients. The overall low adherence scores to nutrition-related activities demonstrates that there is plenty of room for improvement among the practices in the training group.

FIGURE 1

Study overview. *From 21 counties in Pennsylvania and 7 counties in New Jersey. **Some practices became ineligible after the start of data collection as a result of changes in the status of the practice since the initial recruitment.

FIGURE 2

Mean adherence scores and 95% confidence intervals. Numbers over bars are mean adherence scores.

FIGURE 3

Percentage of practices following specific recommendations of the National Cancer Institute manual with 95% confidence intervals. Numbers over bars are percentages of practices following recommendations.