Diabetes is increasingly becoming a central public health matter

Diabetes is increasingly becoming a central public health matter

Diabetes is increasingly becoming a central public health matter, nationally and globally. Thus, most of the interventions have adopted a top-down approach in addressing the issues concerning the disease. Nonetheless, there is a growing realization that local stakeholders play a more integral; thus, it is necessary to include them in the decision-making processes from the onset. The benefit of a bottom-up strategy in diabetes management is that local stakeholders have a contextualized understanding of the problem. Consequently, they have better knowledge of priority areas and resource gaps. In this exercise, evaluation of the stakeholder engagement and unique interventions at my local setting will occur.

At the local level, numerous stakeholders are involved in addressing the practice problem. They include county health representatives, community health workers, and healthcare practitioners. Notably, diabetes has become a premier local problem. Accordingly, several Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) have come up to develop community-centered interventions. They also form a critical part of the essential stakeholders at the neighborhood level. The justification for this view is that they are well-placed to know of the resources constraints that a community faces in managing the disease. Additionally, the organizations represent individuals that have shared believes and values. According to Kwan et al. (2017), this aspect creates the basis for a person-centered approach to the provision of health services because of the peer support element. Patients also form an essential part of the stakeholders. They act as the primary point of interaction between providers and other auxiliary stakeholders like the CBOs.

At my local setting, no dedicated approach exists to combat diabetes. As a general practice institution, the focus is on the treatment of all diseases without a specific focus on any one of them. Instead, the care of diabetes patients ends at the point prescribed by available Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs). However, statistics from the facility indicate that a significant number of patients have diabetes. Further, a notable proportion of those that do not present with diabetes also have the disease but are managing it. Moreover, the highest section of the patients has pre-diabetes. Consequently, it is imperative to take proactive steps to deal with the impending influx of cases in the medium term.

The proposed intervention involves undertaking an awareness campaign. This strategy entails the recruitment of all practitioners at the facility to act as educators. Community health workers, CBO, and county health representatives will also be co-opted into the program. The gist of this intervention is educating both the existing and pre-diabetic patients on self-management techniques.

Self-management education entails informing the patient on the various ways that they can use to improve the care of the disease. The measures include teaching the patients to monitor glucose levels on their own, to take their medication appropriately and in the right doses, and adopting healthy eating habits. Further, as a lifestyle disease, patients and the community need to be taught on the importance of regular physical activities and having meaningful social engagements.

An intervention involving self-management education is also valuable in addressing existing systematic challenges in the local healthcare setting. At the local facility, a shortage of qualified practitioners exists. Therefore, by training the patients on how to manage the disease on their own, the program would help free-up the available healthcare workers. Consequently, the latter would be available to address other major and emerging practice problems. Moreover, the intervention is in line with team-based and patient-centered approaches to healthcare.

References

Kwan, B. M., Jortberg, B., Warman, M. K., Kane, I., Wearner, R., Koren, R., … Nease, D. E. (2017). Stakeholder engagement in diabetes self-management: patient preference for peer support and other insights. Family Practice, cmw127. doi:10.1093/fampra/cmw127