Dyadic Approach To Active Living and Eating Healthy: The DATE Study

Summary

The purpose of the DATE study is to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability and a preliminary evaluation of the efficacy of a dyadic health behaviour change intervention to improve healthy eating, physical activity, and dyadic coping among older obese couples. This novel intervention will use a dyadic adaptation of common health behaviour change strategies and will promote a dyadic coping approach to health behaviour change that emphasize partners' interdependence and shared responsibility for the creation of a home environment conducive to a healthy lifestyle. For this project 35 obese older adults cohabiting dyads will be randomized to either the couples-based dyadic health behaviour change intervention or a couples-based nutrition counselling control condition.

Conditions

• Obesity

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Dyadic health behaviour change intervention

The dyadic behaviour change intervention adopts a dyadic coping perspective wherein appraisal of shared responsibility, agreement on tasks, and collaboration are fostered throughout the intervention. The intervention will target four behaviour goals: reducing overall caloric intake, substituting empty calorie foods with healthier alternatives, reducing sedentary behaviour, and increasing physical activity. The specific behavioural change strategies will include motivational interviewing, self-monitoring, goal setting, stimulus control, problem solving, and relapse prevention. Each session will also include a short education component on healthy eating to improve participants' adherence to the updated Canada's Food Guide. Participants will have access to web-based exercise training sessions. Intervention sessions will be delivered online.

BEHAVIORAL

Dyadic nutrition counselling intervention

The couples-based education nutrition intervention will provide extensive information on healthy eating. However, it will not include any behavioural change principles. Topics will be based on Dietitians of Canada's Practice-based Evidence in Nutrition (PEN) discussions in the database that focus on healthy eating for older adults. The topics covered will include increasing fruits and vegetables, hidden (empty) calories, how to read food labels, portion control, reducing salt and saturated fat, plant-based proteins, and eating for healthy bones. Participants in this group will also be told to increase their levels of physical activity to 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week, as per the Canadian Guidelines. Participants will have access to web-based exercise training sessions. However, physical activity will not be discussed explicitly during the intervention. Intervention sessions will be delivered online.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Centre de Recherche de l'Institut Universitaire de Geriatrie de Montreal

  collaborator OTHER

• Concordia University, Montreal

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

50 Years

Max Age

75 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-12-15

Primary Completion

2023-06-15

Completion

2024-11-15

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations