Evaluation of a community health promotion resource for primary care practices.

Background: Primary care physicians' ability to provide effective health behavior change advice might be leveraged by linking to available community resources. This study evaluates tools to facilitate such a link.

Design: A mixed methods longitudinal pre-post-test study was conducted in 2004.

Exercise, diet, and weight loss advice in the family medicine outpatient setting.

Background: The 5A's heuristic (Ask, Assess willingness to change, Advise, Assist, and Arrange followup) has been proposed as a general approach to brief health behavior advice. This study's purpose was to discover the extent to which the 5A's heuristic is used to discuss exercise, diet, and weight loss during adult primary care visits and to test if individuals with a greater body mass index (BMI) or a chronic disease are more likely to receive more-comprehensive advice.

Methods: We performed a cross-sectional direct observation study of 300 family medicine outpatient visits.