A large-scale diabetes prevention program in real-life settings in Qingdao of China (2006–2012)

Abstract 

Aims

Qingdao Diabetes Prevention Program aims to translate the trial experience to real-life settings with goals to: (1) raise the public awareness of diabetes and diabetes risk factors, and promote healthy diet and physical activity; (2) reduce the number of high-risk people developing diabetes through lifestyle counselling; (3) early diagnosis of diabetes; (4) evaluate the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, feasibility, acceptability and sustainability of the programs.

Program design

The project's first phase (2006–2009) was focused on health promotion targeting at the entire population of 1.94 million, and training of professionals; and the second phase (2009–2012) on lifestyle counselling targeting at individuals with a diabetes risk score of ≥14. The effectiveness of the intervention and the cost-effectiveness of the program between the intervention arm (n=8000) and the control arm (n=4000) who are randomly selected from the project targeting and not-targeting areas will be evaluated with the diabetes incidence as the primary outcome.

Milestone achieved from 2006 to 2009: 3993 health professionals finished training courses; 724,130 educational booklets were distributed to families and 318,284 high-risk individuals recorded and 130,164 underwent at least one follow-up counselling session.

Keywords: Primordial and primary prevention, Diabetes and high-risk population, Real-life setting, Large-scale lifestyle intervention