What’s the comparison between health coaching methods with Wegovy-supported patients?
A new study published in Cureus has examined the role of proactive and reactive lifestyle coaching in a UK-based digital weight loss programme (DWLS) supported by semaglutide therapy, a well-known GLP-1 agonist used to treat obesity.
The study sought to determine whether a proactive coaching model, involving personalised and frequent interaction, could enhance patient engagement and improve weight loss outcomes compared to a standard, reactive coaching approach. The analysis focused on patients enrolled in the Juniper DWLS, which provides lifestyle coaching via an app-based platform.
It revealed that patients who received proactive health coaching showed higher engagement towards their health coaching and app activity and, on average, lost more weight.
Understanding the results
The study included 154 non-diabetic patients with overweight or obesity, split between proactive and reactive coaching groups. Patients in the proactive group received customised coaching, regular prompts to update progress, and accountability features such as goal-setting notifications. The reactive group engaged with health coaches only when the patients requested and completed standardised biweekly check-ins.
The study revealed key insights into how coaching styles influence patient behaviour and outcomes:
- Patients in the proactive group had statistically higher engagement with proactive coaching, sending an average of 19.37 messages to their health coach over the 16-week study period, compared to 8.55 in the reactive group.
- Proactive patients also accessed the app more frequently, with a mean of 49.31 days compared to 40.06 days for the reactive group.
- Proactive coaching patients experienced slightly higher average weight loss (10.1% of baseline weight) than those in the reactive group (8.9%). Although the difference was not statistically significant, many observers would consider it clinically significant.
- Across both groups, 84.4% of participants achieved at least 5% body weight loss, and nearly half achieved 10% body weight loss.
- Interestingly, there was significant gender disparity in the study, with female patients losing significantly more weight on average (9.76%) than male patients (6.88%).
Significance of the research
The study findings suggest that while proactive coaching significantly boosts patient engagement, there’s an opportunity for improvements in the programme design for a more curated patient experience. They also indicate that the design of DWLSs, including app functionality and educational content, could play a more critical role in achieving sustained results than coaching intensity alone.
Importantly, the study underscores the potential of semaglutide-supported DWLSs as effective obesity interventions, with mean weight-loss outcomes exceeding those of similar face-to-face programmes. The novel engagement findings also align with the guidance of major global health institutions like the WHO and NICE, which recommend combining GLP-1 receptor agonist therapies with continuous lifestyle interventions.
Juniper’s use of medication as a supplement to continuous health coaching delivers significantly better weight loss outcomes than programmes that provide medication with limited lifestyle guidance. Previous real-world semaglutide studies (in Europe and the USA) reported 3-month weight loss of 6.3% and 6.6%, compared to 10.1% in this study's cohort (at 16 weeks/3.68 months). Only 20% and 53.7% of these cohorts achieved clinically meaningful weight loss at this point, compared to 84.44% in the Juniper UK cohort (at 16 weeks/3.68 months).
