Telemedicine for Reach, Education, Access, and Treatment for Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support

Overview

Emerging adults with type 1 diabetes are a vulnerable population. While diabetes self-management and education is known to offer opportunities to develop self-management skills required to achieve and maintain short- and long-term diabetes outcomes, emerging adults are reported to have poor clinic attendance and in turn low participation in diabetes self-management education and support services. This pilot study aims to test a novel approach to diabetes self-management education and support that incorporates technological and applied learning-driven methods delivered through group telemedicine visits to improve emerging adults engagement in diabetes self-management education and support with the ultimate goal of improving diabetes outcomes.

Diabetes self-management education and support is considered a cornerstone of care and essential in helping people navigate self-management decisions and activities. Despite evidence that diabetes self-management education and support is a critical component of diabetes care, participation remains low. Emerging adulthood has been described as the distinct period between 18 and 25 years when adolescents work to achieve autonomy and explore life possibilities in moving toward adulthood. Suboptimal self-management has been identified as a major problem in emerging adults with type 1 diabetes, a particularly vulnerable group with an increased risk for poor diabetes-related outcomes. In its current form diabetes self-management education and support has been cited for not meeting the needs of emerging adults, when emerging adults have expressed interest in diabetes self-management education and support delivered with peer-supported, technological and applied learning-driven methods. To address these challenges, we are applying information gained from the literature and key stakeholder groups to our established Telemedicine for Reach, Education, Access and Treatment (TREAT) delivery model with a specific focus on diabetes self-management education and support. TREAT-ED (for self-management EDucation) will be designed to specifically engage emerging adults by integrating diabetes self-management education and support objectives to support informed decision making, self-care, and preparation for transfer to adult care, to improve outcomes. Diabetes care and education specialists will lead TREAT-ED with a cohort of emerging adults and will 1) help to organize and facilitate group sessions delivered through telehealth and 2) use continuous blood glucose monitoring reports as personalized examples to drive established diabetes self-management education and support content. With user-centered design techniques we developed and built and will now evaluate implementation determinants and test the TREAT-ED model. Feasibility assessment of the impact of the model on emerging adult patient participation in diabetes self-management education and support along with clinical, psychosocial and behavioral outcomes will be examined. We hypothesize that models that rely on current day strategies to engage emerging adults at high risk for diabetes-related problems with effective self-management skills will improve diabetes self-management education and support engagement and outcomes. If proven to be effective, this model is one that could be adapted for emerging adults who have transferred to adult diabetes care and other patient populations throughout the United States.