Multi-stakeholder collaboration provides the foundation for transformative initiatives to improve diabetes prevention, care, and management.
November 12, 2020
PHILADELPHIA — November is National Diabetes Awareness Month, a time when communities across the country team up to bring attention to diabetes. Health Care Improvement Foundation (HCIF) is supporting multiple collaborative initiatives aimed at addressing diabetes in Southeastern Pennsylvania, including Novo Nordisk’s Cities Changing Diabetes, and The Philadelphia Diabetes Prevention Collaborative funded by the American Medical Association and led by the Jefferson College of Population Health (JCPH).
Since 2019, HCIF has lent expertise in project management, facilitation, evaluation, and stakeholder engagement as a local backbone organization for Cities Changing Diabetes – Philadelphia. This global program, sponsored by Novo Nordisk, helps cities around the world understand their unique diabetes challenges, identify areas and populations at greatest risk, and design and implement targeted solutions. In 2020, Cities Changing Diabetes – Philadelphia launched the Innovation Challenge, inviting stakeholders to compete for preliminary funding to implement new ideas for improving diabetes prevention, care, and management. Proposal development is underway, and the top five ideas will be announced in early 2021.
The Philadelphia Diabetes Prevention Collaborative (PDPC) promotes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Diabetes Prevention Program, a lifestyle-modification program launched in 2010 to address the increasing burden of type 2 diabetes. The PDPC brings together stakeholders from community-based organizations, academic health systems, providers, payers and local employers focused on disease prevention and health-promotion activities. The collaborative’s focus is twofold: educate providers and patients about effective lifestyle change programs, and ensure that interested participants have access to classes, which have continued virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has shown that Diabetes Prevention Program participants can reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 58 percent (and 71 percent for people over 60 years of age).
The need for targeted programs addressing diabetes in Philadelphia stems from the city’s standing as the poorest of America’s 10 largest cities and its ranking at the bottom of the commonwealth’s 67 counties in terms of health outcomes. Equitable access to preventive services and quality care is a priority for both initiatives. This has become particularly important in 2020, as diabetes and racial disparities in healthcare are risk factors for COVID-19.
For more information about HCIF’s diabetes initiatives, please contact Project Coordinator Jibreel Oliver, joliver@hcifonline.org.