Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, the PROPEL Study found that an intensive healthy lifestyle intervention—which included health coaches embedded in primary care practices working with patients to develop healthy habits—resulted in patients losing significantly more weight than those who received usual care from their primary care clinics, and they kept more weight off at two years later. The results show that successful weight loss can be achieved in primary care settings in a highly underserved population who have significant barriers to obtaining health care services.

The PCORnet^® Bariatric Study—which is using data from PCORnet, The National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network—to study outcomes among patients who undergo common weight-loss surgeries has published several papers in prominent medical journals. The most recent clinical findings, published in JAMA Surgery, are on diabetes remission outcomes among patients who underwent gastric bypass and gastric sleeve surgeries. Another article, also published in JAMA Surgery, details the five-year outcomes of patients who underwent either gastric bypass or adjustable banding, finding that gastric bypass patients were significantly more likely than gastric sleeve patients to end up back in the hospital in the years following surgery.