Observational studyJournal of occupational health2024
Comparison of BMI changes in Japanese adults receiving face-to-face versus online counseling for specific health guidance: a noninferiority prospective observational study.
Observational study in Journal of occupational health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evidence-based Specific Health Guidance for Obese Individuals with Cardiovascular Risk Factors to Reduce Weight and Waist Circumference.Journal of atherosclerosis and thrombosis · 2026Article
- Changes in body weight, awareness, and behaviors among workers participating in an online specific health guidance program incorporating multiple nudges: a process evaluation.Environmental and occupational health practice · 2026Article
- Evaluation of specific health guidance in small municipality using 7 years data of National Health Insurance database.Nagoya journal of medical science · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThis study aimed to evaluate the noninferiority of online counseling over face-to-face counseling for specific health guidance (SHG).
methodsThis prospective observational study was conducted using specific health checkup (SHC) and SHG data of individuals with health insurance in Japan. We analyzed data from 1431 participants who met the inclusion criteria, including those who underwent online or face-to-face counseling between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, and received an SHC in the following year but no earlier than 90 days after their first counseling session. Assessed variables comprised demographics, counseling methods, and SHC results, including baseline questionnaire findings and body mass index (BMI) at follow-up. We performed inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) using propensity scores, with changes in BMI as the objective variable and the counseling method as the explanatory variable. We set the noninferiority margin to 0.175, based on a previous study.
resultsThe online and face-to-face counseling groups comprised 455 (31.8%) and 976 (68.2%) participants, respectively. The number of men and mean age were 214 (47.0%) and 49.9 years (SD: 6.9 years), respectively, in the online counseling group, and 491 (50.3%) and 51.1 years (SD: 7.6 years), respectively, in the face-to-face counseling group. IPTW using propensity scores revealed a regression coefficient of -0.014 (95% CI: -0.157 to 0.129) for the online group compared with the face-to-face group (P = .847). The CI was within the noninferiority margin.
conclusionsThe effects of online counseling on BMI are likely noninferior to those of face-to-face counseling.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.