The Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists’ (ADCES) annual conference highlights innovation in prediabetes, diabetes, and cardiometabolic care. On August 14, the ADCES conference will feature a presentation by Silver Fern Healthcare and WellSpark Health describing how their behaviorally enriched Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) combined the best of digital health with the engagement benefits of traditional care delivery to achieve outstanding results for a hard-to-reach population of commercial drivers.
Outcomes of the 12-month program included:
- A clinically significant reduction in A1C from 5.6% to 5.2%.
- A gradual and sustained trend of weight loss, with the average percentage of weight loss at the end of the program at 10.6%. Sixty percent of drivers achieved the CDC’s 5% weight-loss criterion, compared to 35.5%, the CDC’s published DPP benchmark results from its 2017 national database.
- An increase in participants’ average weekly minutes of physical activity from 154 to 271. The CDC’s physical activity goal of 150 minutes per week was achieved by 82% of drivers in this behaviorally enriched DPP, compared to 41.8% of CDC participants.
- High levels of sustained engagement in the program. At the 22-session mark, engagement was approximately seven-times higher in the behaviorally enriched DPP than in the CDC database.
During the ADCES session, Silver Fern’s Chief Scientific Officer, Garry Welch, Ph.D., and consultant Deborah Greenwood, Ph.D., will explain how these clinically significant results were obtained by enriching the traditional DPP model with practical, research validated behavior and psychosocial assessment tools and a culturally tailored, individualized approach to treatment.
Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes are principally self-managed diseases, largely influenced by culture and environment. Silver Fern Healthcare’s Behavior Diagnostic Platform leverages 30 years of clinical research and integrates the ADA’s 2016 landmark guidelines for prediabetes and diabetes, which emphasize the importance of addressing behavior and psychosocial issues. The platform features clinically proven behavior and psychosocial assessments that provide chronic care management teams with unique tools and previously inaccessible insights to improve health outcomes for people with chronic diseases.
DPP is a standardized group education model, however some hard to reach at-risk populations require a more personalized approach to successfully engage them and achieve desired outcomes. The WellSpark coaches used results from Silver Fern assessments on health literacy, meal plan, physical activity, behavioral health, bodily pain, and poor sleep to unlock the root causes of unhealthy behaviors, identify participant treatment preferences, and provide them with the resources they needed to overcome their individual barriers. WellSpark coaches tailored the treatment approach to the unique culture of the commercial driver population and introduced participants to an ecosystem of targeted support, including social workers, talk therapy, and health coaching.
Program participants shared the following comments about the behaviorally enriched DPP:
“This program is bringing me closer to my family. I now have more energy and can play with my kids. The lessons I am learning every week make it feel like I really can maintain this healthy lifestyle.”
“If it wasn’t for this program, I don’t know if I’d be alive right now. Thank you!”
The former president of the drivers’ employee union said, “This program is transforming how the family unit relates to food, exercise and wellness. The benefits will be transferred to future generations.”
Healthcare professionals know that improving patient engagement is essential to long-term, successful management of prediabetes and diabetes. By keeping coaches at the center of care delivery, the WellSpark DPP promoted patient education with seven times patient engagement compared to the best CDC programs. This was accomplished through authentic participant engagement, rather than a punitive or incentive-based structure to compel behavior change.
By focusing on patient engagement and the behavior and psychosocial drivers of good health, Silver Fern and WellSpark Health are preventing and reducing chronic disease complications, comorbidity, and healthcare utilization over the life of patients, thereby improving health outcomes and reducing the total cost of care.
This behaviorally enriched DPP resulted in strong engagement and clinical outcomes for a challenging population. Future studies could explore the application of this approach in other prediabetes or chronic disease populations.
For more information about the ADCES 2020 virtual conference or to register for this session, visit https://www.adcesmeeting.org/.