Lifestyle Interventions for Expectant Mothers (LIFE-Moms) Consortium

The LIFE-Moms Consortium is a collaboration between the seven clinical centers, the Research Coordinating Unit and the funding Institutes and Centers of the NIH.  The overall goal of the Consortium is to identify effective behavioral and lifestyle interventions that will improve weight, glycemic control and other-pregnancy-related outcomes in obese and overweight pregnant women, and determine whether these interventions reduce obesity and metabolic abnormalities in their children.  Although each clinical center is conducting a separate trial, the objective of the collaboration is to maximize the value of the individual trials by identifying core measures collected across all studies and ensuring consistency of procedures, certain eligibility criteria, definitions and data collection. The primary outcome for the Consortium is excessive gestational weight gain. Secondary outcomes include maternal, neonatal, and infant anthropometric measures, physical activity, sleep, and complications of pregnancy and delivery.  

VISIT STUDY WEBSITE

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

Rebecca Clifton

Kimberly Drews

ADDITIONAL INVESTIGATORS

Trisha Boekhoudt

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS

Peaceman AM, Clifton RG, Phelan S, Gallagher D, Evans M, Redman LM, Knowler WC, Joshipura K, Haire-Joshu D, Yanovski SZ, Couch KA, Drews KL, Franks PW, Klein S, Martin CK, Pi-Sunyer X, Thom EA, Van Horn L, Wing RR, Cahill AG; LIFE‐Moms Research Group. Lifestyle Interventions Limit Gestational Weight Gain in Women with Overweight or Obesity: LIFE-Moms Prospective Meta-Analysis. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2018 Sep;26(9):1396-1404. doi: 10.1002/oby.22250. Epub 2018 Sep 6. PMID: 30230252

Clifton RG, Evans M, Cahill AG, Franks PW, Gallagher D, Phelan S, Pomeroy J, Redman LM, Van Horn L; LIFE-Moms Research Group. Design of lifestyle intervention trials to prevent excessive gestational weight gain in women with overweight or obesity. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2016 Feb;24(2):305-13. doi: 10.1002/oby.21330. Epub 2015 Dec 26. PMID: 26708836

Project Overview:

The Lifestyle Interventions for Expectant Moms (LIFE-Moms) Consortium is designed to determine, in pregnant women with overweight or obesity, whether various behavioral and lifestyle interventions reduce excessive gestational weight gain and subsequent adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes and obesity in offspring.

Major findings/impact of study:

Behavioral lifestyle interventions focusing primarily on diet and physical activity among women with overweight and obesity resulted in a significantly lower proportion of women with excess gestational weight gain. This modest beneficial effect was consistent across diverse intervention modalities in a large, racially and socioeconomically diverse US population of pregnant women.