Associations between Trust of Healthcare Provider and Body Mass Index in Adolescents.
Heather K Hardin, Shirley M Moore, Scott E Moore and 1 others
PMID 32574088WHAT IT FOUND
Girls with obesity reported lower trust in their healthcare provider than healthy-weight girls, and higher trust was associated with lower BMI in girls but not boys.
More than half of adolescents whose measured BMI showed overweight or obesity did not report a diagnosis.
Key findings
01Across the sample, more trust in a healthcare provider was associated with lower BMI; the association was seen in girls but not in boys.
02Girls in the obese BMI percentile category reported significantly lower trust of their healthcare provider than girls in the healthy BMI percentile category.
03More than half of boys and girls whose measured BMI indicated overweight or obesity did not report an overweight or obesity diagnosis by their healthcare provider.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample from one public high school, and it was mostly non-Hispanic white girls, so the results may not apply to other groups. This was a cross-sectional survey, so it cannot show whether low trust leads to higher BMI, higher BMI leads to lower trust, or another factor explains both. Only 190 of the original 224 adolescents had complete data for the main trust and BMI variables, and missing data were handled by excluding incomplete cases from some analyses. The underweight group had only two girls, so the low trust seen in those two cannot be treated as a reliable finding. The study measured trust and BMI but did not test whether provider communication behaviors improve trust or BMI.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that building trust will reduce BMI. This study only measured trust and BMI at one time, and the association was found in girls but not boys.