Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures
What is the goal of the ADOPT Core Measures Project?
The long-term goal of the Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures Project is to better understand the well-documented individual differences in response to a wide range of obesity treatments. These differences are likely due to a combination of behavioral, biological, environmental, and psychosocial factors. Yet, we currently lack the data to comprehensively identify the underlying factors and examine how they interact to influence response to treatments.
As a first step, the ADOPT Project identified a standard set of about 50 Core Measures, or factors, that can be analyzed across studies to better understand the variation in response to obesity treatments. The ADOPT Project encourages and facilitates the consistent use of these Core Measures in future clinical trials to treat obesity in adults. The goal is to have consistent use and analysis of these Core Measures to create datasets. These datasets can then be used in pooled analyses and meta-analyses to investigate how these Core Measures contribute to individual differences in response to obesity treatments.
These analyses can address such questions as:
- How do psychosocial, environmental, and biological factors affect how well a person adheres to behavioral strategies promoted in obesity intervention trials?
- How does sleep duration and quality of sleep influence eating patterns and physical activity through circadian rhythms, mood, or both?
- Does weight loss from restricting calories lead to biological and psychosocial responses that increase the rewarding effects of food?
Ultimately, these data can inform the design and delivery of a precision medicine, or a personalized approach to obesity treatment.
AT A GLANCE
- ADOPT provides a framework for how obesity researchers can generate evidence to develop precision medicine approaches to obesity treatment.
- The ADOPT Core Measures Project identified an initial list of Core Measures, or factors, that appear to influence response to obesity treatments.
- Consistent use of the ADOPT Core Measures Project will help us learn how these factors contribute to variable responses to existing obesity treatments.
- The Core Measures span four domains—behavioral, biological, environmental, and psychosocial—and will be updated as the science advances.
- The NHLBI and other NIH Institutes support funding opportunities to add the ADOPT Core Measures Project to current and planned clinical research.
- ADOPT aims to share knowledge across existing obesity research labs and foster collaboration among researchers of varied disciplines and levels of training.
Why is the ADOPT Core Measures Project important?
Developing a precision approach to obesity treatment poses significant challenges because treatments that are considered successful are not always effective for everyone, and few factors have been found to reliably predict success. One important reason is that we lack datasets with most or all of the potential factors that can account for the observed differences in response to obesity treatments and that also span the behavioral, biological, environmental, and psychosocial domains. The ADOPT Project is a significant first step toward addressing this challenge.
Collection of data on these Core Measures spanning the four interdisciplinary domains should help researchers better describe how the factors work together to impact obesity treatment responses.
Learn more about the rationale and process for developing the ADOPT Core Measures Project.
How does the ADOPT Core Measures Project contribute to scientific discovery?
The ADOPT Core Measures Project provides detailed information on the measures in a publicly available resource, called the Grid-Enabled Measures (GEM). GEM provides researchers access to supporting information on the ADOPT Core Measures Project and facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration across the four ADOPT Project research discipline domains. The resource also serves as a forum for researchers to share their practical experiences with implementing the measures in their clinical trials.
The ADOPT Core Measures Project addresses many of the objectives, compelling questions, and critical challenges identified in the 2016 NHLBI Strategic Vision, particularly those related to investigating factors that account for individual differences in health, pathobiology, and responses to treatment.
How does the ADOPT Core Measures Project work?
Researchers are encouraged to access and use the Core Measures to help build a database to enable researchers to answer questions about predictors, mediators, and moderators of responses to obesity treatments.
The Core Measures are classified into four major domains: behavior, biology, environment, and psychology.
View the list of ADOPT Core Measures by domain.
Behavior
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Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures
Biology
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Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures
Environment
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Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures
Psychology
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Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures
More information
The NHLBI and other NIH Institutes and Centers have released funding opportunity announcements that support the addition of measures to new or existing clinical trials.
- NOT-21-030: Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Heart, Lung, Blood and Sleep Focused Ancillary Studies to Large Ongoing Clinical Studies (Revised)
For more information on the ADOPT Core Measures Project, contact us at adopt@nih.gov.