Comprehensive Diabetes Intervention Research Project

University of Arizona: Canyon Ranch Center for Prevention and Health Promotion

Topics:
Diabetes | Nutrition & Physical Activity for Adults

Project collaborators are implementing and evaluating multiple strategies to prevent and control diabetes among Mexican Americans living along Arizona’s U.S.-Mexico border. For these people, deaths from diabetes are 50% greater than for other Americans. The project comprises four interventions including patients, families, and community residents, and one aimed at establishing local policies to support healthy lifestyles. In addition, the project addresses depression as a risk factor for heart disease as well as a complication of diabetes. The collaborators encourage participation in more than one intervention to increase the likelihood that participants will adopt healthy behaviors and maintain them.

All participants are being screened for diabetes and depression, and referred for treatment as well. About 300–400 patients diagnosed with diabetes are expected to participate in the patient intervention, during which clinic staff assisted by community health workers (CHWs) teach four weekly small-group classes to help patients learn how to manage their diabetes. Half of these patients will be recruited for the family intervention, during which CHWs teach patients and their extended families (grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and close friends) how to reduce their risk for diabetes and how to support one another in their efforts to increase physical activity and healthy food choices. These patients and their families are also encouraged to participate in a 12-week, CHW-led community intervention along with friends, neighbors, and other residents to learn more about preventing diabetes and to join in the CHW-led walking groups. In addition to these behavioral change interventions, community action boards (CABs) are advocating for policies to help guard against diabetes, such as removing soda and non-nutritious food from vending machines at schools, creating community walking and bicycle paths, and providing physical education classes for all school students.

In addition to evaluating individual and policy outcomes, the project team will assess how the CHW model affects patients’ self-management practices, examine the role of family in supporting behavioral change, and determine whether participation in several interventions increases effects on individual health behavior. They will compare the health behaviors of participants who took part in two or more interventions with those who participated in only one, and determine which intervention or combination of them resulted in the greatest effect on individual health behavior.

Read story of prevention research for this project.

 

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