Scaling Up the National Diabetes Prevention Program through Clinical and Community Partnerships

Purpose                             

The National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) encourages collaboration among federal agencies, community-based organizations, employers, insurers, health care professionals, academia and other stakeholders to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes among people with pre-diabetes in the United States. 

In partnership with the YMCA and area safety-net healthcare centers the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LAC DPH) has worked to scale DPP by 1) planning and executing data-driven actions through a network of partners across Los Angeles to increase enrollment and participation of high risk, low-income clients in the DPP, and 2) expanding the DPP beyond YMCA locations to local health centers to provide the program on site. 

This presentation will provide practitioners with inforamtion for scaleing prevention efforts such as DPP at the local level. The presentation will also address common barriers and challenges to implementation.

Methods

LAC DPH in partnership with the YMCA and area clinical partners has begun to facilitate the referral process of the DPP program by including integrating mechanisms into clinical electronic health records (EHR) or staff protocols to identify and refer patients to DPP community and clinical resources. The EHR will form one of the foundational bases for evidence-based strategies, coupling self-management with clinical support and implementing systems to facilitate bidirectional referral between community resources and health systems.  Trainings for all primary care clinical staff will also be instituted to build a team care approach. EHR data will be used to identify health services utilization hot spots to help identify patients with uncontrolled hypertension, diabetes, and related chronic diseases.

Results

Early stages of planning showed that most, but not all, providers screened patients for pre-diabetes. At those health centers that offered DPP, most reported limited access to provider tools, low patient turn-out rates and very few had adopted systematic referral process for DPP.