Monitoring Healthy People 2010 Arthritis Management Objectives: Education and Clinician Counseling for Weight Loss and Exercise

Purpose: Our goal was to monitor the progress of 3 Healthy People 2010 (HP2010) objectives encouraging self-management education and clinician counseling for weight loss and physical activity among adults with doctor-diagnosed arthritis.

Methods: Using the national 2002 and 2006 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and state-based 2003 and 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), we estimated the change in proportion of persons counseled for each objective, overall and by selected characteristics.

Results: Nationally, the proportion of overweight and obese adults with doctor-diagnosed arthritis who were counseled by their clinician to lose weight to lessen their arthritis symptoms increased significantly from 35.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 32.8%-37.2%) in 2002 to 41.3% (95% CI, 38.7%-44.0%) in 2006 but have yet to reach the 2010 target of 46%. There was no change in the proportion of adults with doctor-diagnosed arthritis who had ever taken a self-management education class (approximately 11%) or who had been counseled to engage in physical activity (approximately 52%), whose targets for 2010 are 13% and 67%, respectively. States had variable findings.

Conclusions: Nationally, significant progress has been made by clinicians for weight counseling of overweight and obese adults with doctor-diagnosed arthritis but not for the other 2 arthritis management objectives. Because clinician counseling can have important effects on the latter, this discrepancy suggests a need to focus on barriers to physician counseling for these outcomes.