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In this exclusive video, Julia Tchou, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, discusses her recent reported at the evaluating the effectiveness of telehealth appointments for weight loss in breast cancer survivors with obesity.

The following is a transcript of her remarks:

My name is Julia Tchou. I'm from the University of Pennsylvania.

We have started a single-arm pilot study to look at using telehealth platforms to deliver a weight loss intervention program for our breast cancer survivors who have obesity. Our pilot cohort is comprised of 11 patients. Over 24 weeks, they received a weekly counseling session. The program was well received and feasible and acceptable, and there was a 6.5% average weight loss in this cohort, which is clinically meaningful.

So going forward, we'd like to understand how we can enroll more patients and keep the patients in the program, as well as have our patient population include more under-represented patients, who are disproportionately affected by obesity in urban settings.

These are breast cancer patients who have completed all their treatment surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. They have to be 6 months out and disease-free, and they will have to, in order to enroll, have obesity, which is defined as a BMI [body mass index] of 25 or over. They are contacted by phone, they consented by phone, and all of the visits are conducted virtually; they don't have to be in person.

This is a group-based telehealth format, so we think we are able to widely disseminate the weight loss program within our health system, as well as elsewhere in the country. We are hoping that our health system will adopt this program and roll it out to more patients with all types of disease.