Better Knee, Better Me™: effectiveness of two scalable health care interventions supporting self-management for knee osteoarthritis - protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Although education, exercise, and weight loss are recommended for management of knee osteoarthritis, the additional benefits of incorporating weight loss strategies into exercise interventions have not been well investigated. The aim of this study is to compare, in a private health insurance setting, the clinical- and cost-effectiveness of a remotely-delivered, evidence- and theory-informed, behaviour change intervention targeting exercise and self-management (Exercise intervention), with the same intervention plus active weight management (Exercise plus weight management intervention), and with an information-only control group for people with knee osteoarthritis who are overweight or obese.

Methods: Three-arm, pragmatic parallel-design randomised controlled trial involving 415 people aged ≥45 and ≤ 80 years, with body mass index ≥28 kg/m and < 41 kg/m and painful knee osteoarthritis.