MOTIVATE Research Lab Contribution to Science | NYU Langone Health

NYU Langone’s MOTIVATE Research Lab MOTIVATE Research Lab Contribution to Science

MOTIVATE Research Lab Contribution to Science

The principal investigator of the MOTIVATE Research Lab, Melanie R. Jay, MD, MS is a leader in obesity and health services research. Learn more about her contributions to the field.

Research on Provider Training and Obesity Counseling

Dr. Jay’s early research focused on training interventions for providers and integrating 5As obesity counseling into patient centered medical home models of primary care. She has developed a 5As obesity training intervention for primary care providers and tested its impact on physicians’ counseling skills and patient outcomes. This was the first study to show an impact of 5As counseling on patient weight.

Related Publications

Jay M … Kalet A. Do internists, pediatricians, and psychiatrists feel competent in obesity care?: Using a needs assessment to drive curriculum design. J Gen Intern Med. 2008. DOI.

Jay M … Gillespie C. Physicians' attitudes about obesity and their associations with competency and specialty: A cross-sectional study. BMC Health Serv Res. 2009. DOI.

Jay M … Gillespie C. From the patient's perspective: The impact of training on resident physician's obesity counseling. J Gen Intern Med. 2010. DOI.

Jay M, Gillespie C, Schlair S, Savarimuthu S, Sherman S, Zabar S, Kalet A. The impact of primary care resident physician training on patient weight loss at 12 months. Obesity. 2013; 21(1);45-50.

Development of Technology-Based Health Coaching Interventions in Primary Care

Dr. Jay’s team developed interventions to address barriers to 5As counseling that utilize technology and team-based models of care such as Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT) at the VA NY Harbor Health Care System. Using qualitative methods (interviews with PACT staff and focus groups with patients), Dr. Jay and her team identified barriers and facilitators to obesity counseling and behavior change that informed intervention development. She then tested these interventions at the Veterans Affairs and at Montefiore Medical Center. The Goals for Eating and Moving (GEM) tested the impact of using volunteers as health coaches and the Peer-Assisted Lifestyle  (PAL) program used Veteran Peer coaches.

As part of PAL and GEM, Dr. Jay and her team have evaluated technology-based interventions to facilitate behavior change. The team has conducted usability testing of a VA NY Harbor Healthcare System expert system software application (MOVE!23) in Latina women and veterans. Dr. Jay found that while patients appreciated receiving computer-generated tailored advice, they had difficulty using it to set behavior change goals on their own. This led Dr. Jay to develop the MOVE! Toward Your Goals online tool that is optimized for use with tablet computers and promotes goal setting in patients. Health coaches used this tool in the GEM and PAL interventions for weight management.

Related Publications

  1. Vandyousefi, S., Oettingen, G., Wittleder, S., Moin, T., Sweat, V., Aguilar, A. D., Ruan, A., Angelotti, G., Wong, L., Orstad, S. L., Illengberger, N., Nicholson, A., Lim, S., Cansler, R., Portelli, D., Sherman, S., & Jay, M. R. (2024). Protocol for a prospective, randomized, controlled trial of Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) to enhance the effectiveness of VA's MOVE! weight management program: WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) VA. Contemporary clinical trials, 107523. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cct.2024.107523
  2. Jay, M. R., Wittleder, S., Vandyousefi, S., Illenberger, N., Nicholson, A., Sweat, V., ... & Wylie-Rosett, J. (2024). A Cluster-Randomized Study of Technology-Assisted Health Coaching for Weight Management in Primary Care. The Annals of Family Medicine, 22(5), 392-399.
  3. Levine DM … Jay M. Technology-assisted weight loss interventions in primary care: a systematic review. J Gen Intern Med. 2014. DOI.
  4. Jay M, Chintapalli S, Squires A, Mateo K, Sherman S, Kalet A. “Barriers and facilitators to providing primary care-based weight management services in a patient-centered medical home for Veterans: A qualitative study.” BMC Family Practice. 2015; 16:167. PCID: PMC4647798.
  5. Wittleder  S., Ajenikoko  A., Bouwman D., Fang  Y., McKee, M. D., Meissner, P., Jay, M. (2019). Protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a technology-assisted health coaching intervention for weight management in primary care: The GEM (goals for eating and moving) study. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 83, 37–45. PMCID: PMC6709673.
  6. Wittleder, S, Smith, S, Wang, B, Beasley JM, Orstad SL, Sweat V, Squires A, Wong L, Fang Y, Doebrich P, Gutnick D, Tenner C, Sherman S, Jay M. Peer-Assisted Lifestyle (PAL) Intervention: A protocol of a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a health-coaching intervention delivered by Veteran peers to improve obesity treatment in primary care. BMJ Open. 2021;11:e043013. PMCID: PMC7919589
  7. Viglione C, Bouwman D, Rahman N, Fang Y, Beasley J, Sherman S, Pi-Sunyer X, Wylie-Rosett J, Tenner C, Jay M. A Technology-Assisted Health Coaching Intervention vs. Enhanced Usual Care for Primary Care-Based Obesity Treatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial. BMC Obesity. 2019 Feb 4;6:4. PMCID: PMC6360675.

Addressing obesity-related Disparities

Working primarily with vulnerable populations, Dr. Jay is keenly interested in exploring barriers and facilitators to lifestyle behavior change and obesity treatment in populations experiencing health disparities. She used qualitative methods to explore barriers and facilitators to weight management in Latina women and their experience with goal setting. Her team has explored associations between race and weight discrimination on various health outcomes and behaviors, including pain. She was MPI on a large RCT to test financial incentives in patients with obesity from low-income neighborhoods in New York City and Los Angeles (Firework). Her mentee, Dr. Stephanie Orstad, used data from this study to define valid wear days of FitBitTM activity monitors and we have several ongoing secondary analyses of the Firework study.

  1. Ladapo JA, Orstad SL, Wali S, Wylie-Rosett J, Tseng CH, Chung UY, Cuevas MA, Hernandez C, Parraga S, Ponce RB, Sweat V, Wittleder S, Shu SB, Goldstein NJ, Jay M. Effectiveness of goal-directed versus outcome-based financial incentives for weight loss. JAMA Intern Med, December 2022
  2. Jay M, Gutnick D, Squires AP, Tagliaferro B, Gerchow L, Savarimuthu S, Chintapalli S, Shedlin MG, Kalet AL. In Our Country Tortilla Doesn’t Make Us Fat: Cultural Factors Influencing Lifestyle Goal-setting for Overweight and Obese Urban, Latina Patients. Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved. 2014; 25(4): 1603-1622.
  3. Merriwether, E; Wittleder, S; Cho, G; Bogan, E; Thomas, R; Bostwick, N; Wang, B; Ravenell, J; Jay, M. Racial and weight discrimination associations with pain intensity and pain interference in an ethnically diverse sample of adults with obesity: a baseline analysis of the clustered randomized-controlled clinical trial. BMC public health. 2021 21(1):2201
  4. Orstad SL, Gerchow L, Patel NR, Reddy M, Hernandez C, Wilson DK, Jay M. Defining Valid Activity Monitor Data: A Multimethod Analysis of Weight-Loss Intervention Participants’ Barriers to Wear and First 100 Days of Physical Activity. Informatics. 2021; 8(2):39
  5. Jay M, Gutnick D, Squires AP, Tagliaferro B, Gerchow L, Savarimuthu S, Chintapalli S, Shedlin MG, Kalet AL. In Our Country Tortilla Doesn’t Make Us Fat: Cultural Factors Influencing Lifestyle Goal-setting for Overweight and Obese Urban, Latina Patients. Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved. 2014; 25(4): 1603-1622

For a complete list of publications, click here:

 

Thank you for printing content from NYU Langone Health. © 2025 NYU Grossman School of Medicine.