Other // COMPREHENSIVE INTERVENTION/NEW DIAGNOSTIC TOOL FOR DIABETICS TREATMENT
COMPREHENSIVE INTERVENTION/NEW DIAGNOSTIC TOOL
FOR DIABETES TREATMENT
Diabetes is a chronic diseased condition in which the pancreas in unable to produce sufficient insulin, a hormone, or effectively use it in order to regulate blood sugar (WHO, 2017). Unregulated blood sugar leads to hyperglycemia or increased blood sugar levels. In turn, it damages body systems, particularly the blood vessels and the nerves. World records show that it was the direct case of death among 1.6 million in 2014. The number of sufferers increased from 108 ,million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014, mainly among middle and low-income countries (WHO, 2017). The American Diabetes Association (ADA, 2017) reported in 2015 that 30.3 million Americans or 9.4% of the population had diabetes and that 7.2 million were undiagnosed. There are 1.5 million new diagnosed cases every year. Prevailing standard treatment consists of adjusted diet and regular physical activity, aimed at bringing down blood glucose levels and other risks (WHO, 2017).
New Standards
Current-day management of diabetes now calls for an organized and systematically coordinated team of devoted healthcare team (ADA, 2011). This team prioritizes and centers on patient-centered high-quality care. The team and its individual staff expand their role by redesigning their respective delivery systems, motivating and educating patients and their families, and the efficient use of electronic health record tools. One initiative that fulfills all these is the patient-centered medical home. With its coordinated provision for primary care and team-based care for chronic diabetes, this initiative promises better outcomes (ADA, 2011).
Psychosocial Management
An Indian research team (Karla et al, 2013) went through 94 recommendations from general, psychological and social domains. These selected recommendations are to identify psychological interventions that will support patients and their families as well as look into how they can devise support strategies. The recommendations will also help create needed core skills in managing diabetes effectively. These aim at providing practical guidelines in meeting unfulfilled requirements in managing diabetes and assist physicians achieve qualitative improvement of diabetic patient care. The research and recommendations may be India-specific but is also globally pertinent and applicable (Kalra et al, 2013).
Sufficiency of Resources in Designing and Implementing Interventions
Flood and team (2016) documented their experiences at a non-governmental organization, which designs and conducts programs to Diabetes 2 Maya indigenous citizens of Guatemala.
They identified the practical issues and solutions in building and maintaining diabetes programming in Maya regions. A sample group of 142 patients volunteered for the cohort study. Their check-up showed a reduction of 9.2-8.1% in hemoglobin AIC in the 2.1 years of follow-up. The team concluded that the gap in resources in designing and implementing global diabetes interventions must be confronted. When this is done, favorable outcomes can be achieved in managing diabetes in rural areas like Guatemala (Flood et al, 2013).
New Technology: a Telephone Intervention Gadget
A study tested the effectiveness of a telephone intervention scheme on the behavior of minority populations with diabetes in New York City (Charmany et al, 2015 p 1). It compared a telephone intervention with a print-only counterpart of an A1c Registry program. The research was conducted with 941 volunteers with diabetes and a lower than 7 hemoglobin level. The volunteers were mostly Latinos coming from low=income community of South Bronx. Print diabetes self-management materials were sent to all volunteers and some lifestyle incentives every three months. Four health educators contacted only four of the volunteers in a year’s time. The main focus of the intervention was medication adherence, followed by nutrition and exercise (Charmany et al, 2015 p 2).
Both groups demonstrated improvement in self-care, upkeep of medications, and intensification (Charmany et al, 2015 p 1). The study concluded that health educators’ use of the telephone intervention method can an valuable tool in diabetes control among different populations, but most notably among those with the least levels of metabolic control through the use of a registry. This can be incorporated into health systems with electronic recording functions as a public health approach (Charmany et al, 2015 p 2).
The finding of this study has significant value to public health (Charmany et al, 2015 p 9). There have been important strides in diabetes management and control in the last 20 years as shown by increased glycemic, blood pressure and cholesterol control and reduced incidences of complications. But there is always and will always be a need for much better, more accessible and affordable programs or schemes to incline diabetes sufferers to sustained medication adherence and modified behaviors for a wide range of populations. This telephone intervention program holds that promise of improvement, especially among poor populations with a correspondingly poor metabolic control (Charmany et al, 2015 p 10).
WORKS CITED
ADA (2011). Standards of medical care in diabetes – 2011. Doi: 10.2337/de-11-SO11. Diabetes
Care: American Diabetes Association. Retrieved on August 24, 2017 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3006050/
—– (2017). Statistics about diabetes. American Diabetes Association. Retrieved on August 26,
2017 from http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basic/statistics/?referrer=https://ph.search.yahoo.com
Charmany, S. et al (2015).Telephone Intervention to improve diabetes control. American Journal
of Preventive Medicine. Elsevier. Retrieved on August 29, 2017 from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26232903
Flood, D., et al (2016). Implementation and outcomes of a comprehensive type 2 diabetes
program in rural Guatemala. PLoS One: Pulic Library of Science. Retrieved on August 24,
2017 from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0161152
Kalra, S. et al (2013). National recommendations: psychosocial management of diabetes in India.
Vol 17 # 3, Journal of Endocrinol9gy and Metabolism: Wolters Kluwer-Mediknow
Publications. Retrieved on August 24, 2017 from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712367
WHO (2017). Diabetes key facts. World Health Organization. Retrieved on August 26, 2017
from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs312/en
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