Workshop 209

Stephanie Hooker, PhD, MPH, Michelle Sherman, PhD

Heath behavior practices contribute significantly to health outcomes, yet evidence suggests that primary care providers (PCPs) rarely discuss lifestyle behaviors with their patients. Further, when PCPs do talk about health behavior with their patients, they rarely go beyond a simple explanation of risk. In addition to perceived lack of time in visits, this may be because of PCPs’ low confidence in their abilities to affect change in their patients’ behaviors and the lack of evidence-based tools to use with patients in visits. Numerous brief interventions for behavior change delivered by PCPs have been found to be effective in primary care; however, these interventions have not been regularly implemented in standard practice. To address this need, our interdisciplinary team developed Change that Matters: Promoting Healthy Behaviors, a ten-module curriculum that teaches physicians brief, evidence-based behavioral interventions in ten common behavioral health topics (smoking cessation, healthy eating, alcohol reduction, physical activity, sleep, medication adherence, depression, stress, chronic pain, and social isolation). Each of the 10 modules includes three parts: (1) didactic lecture and skill building practice, (2) electronic medical record documentation templates, and (3) an interactive, evidence-based patient handout. In this session, we will describe the development of the curriculum, curricular components, and results of the mixed methods evaluation, which included patient and PCP interviews, expert panel feedback, and self-report surveys. Additionally, we will discuss how behavioral faculty can successfully implement the Change that Matters curriculum in their family medicine residency programs, and discuss ways to overcome common challenges to implementation.        
 

Click here for the session evaluation.