EFFICACY OF A LIFELONG DIABETES SELF-MANAGEMENT INTERVENTION

这个子项目是众多研究子项目之一

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Diabetes is a chronic disease that incurs significant health, disability and financial costs in the United States. African Americans are disproportionately affected by diabetes as they are two times more likely to have diabetes than their White counterparts and suffer greater diabetes-related complications. Diabetes self-management interventions, without follow-up, have been shown to have only short-term positive effects on knowledge, blood glucose monitoring, dietary behavior, and glycemic control. Our intervention is designed to sustain, over the long-term, the self-management and health-related gains achieved in past, time-limited diabetes education programs. Eighty-five urban African-American adults with type 2 diabetes will be recruited for this study. For the first six months, all of the participants will receive pamphlets and literature on diabetes care. This will be the attention-control period for the project. Following this, all of the participants will be invited to attend weekly group sessions conducted over a 24-month period. We will obtain height, weight, and blood pressure, obtain a blood specimen, and collect self-care and psychosocial data on each participant at five different intervals during the study. Alc and lipid values will be obtained on each blood sample. The specific goals of the project are 1) to examine the relative efficacy of 6-months of the Lifelong Management (LM) intervention compared to 6-months of an attention-control period in improving glycemic control and quality of life for African Americans with type 2 diabetes; 2) to investigate whether gains achieved from the first 6-months of the LM intervention are sustained or enhanced over the long-term (18 months); 3) to examine whether glycemic control and quality of life decline during the year following the end of the LM intervention; and 4) to examine the costs and potential health care savings of the LM intervention.'