Developing Comprehensive Diabetes Education Materials for Structured Patient Education Programs in Primary Care Setting

Diabetes education is a key factor for a successful diabetes care. Comprehensive diabetes education materials for conducting structured diabetes education programs were rarely found in primary care setting in Indonesia. There was a need for developing new, comprehensive diabetes education materials for low-literate readers. Developing these education materials followed standard steps in developing print materials, and took account tips for writing low literacy materials for poor readers. The new diabetes education materials consisted of ten various leaflets, also printed as14 posters and 14 x-banners. The ten diabetes leaflets were pre-tested to 5 people with type 2 diabetes (T2D). After minor revisions, the leaflets were printed and distributed to 88 people with T2D attending two structured diabetes education programs in Yogyakarta City. These 88 people were requested to evaluate the leaflets using an evaluation form consisting of four items on language usage, font size, use of pictures, and diabetes information with a 1-10 rating scale; and an open-ended question for improvement. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the results. Most participants thought that the leaflets were easy to understand and read, interesting, and simple. Majority of participants (79.7%) gave favorable comments without providing suggestions for improvement, such as: “The diabetes leaflets are already good and easy to understand” One third of the participants gave suggestions for improvement. The comprehensive diabetes leaflets developed were well received and highly appreciated by people with T2D attending diabetes education programs

PrimeTimes Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2007

PrimeTimes is the newsletter of the Office of Lifespan Studies in the College of Science at Coastal Carolina University

Context-awareness for mobile sensing: a survey and future directions

The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power have empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user related social and cognitive activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provides the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects, and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen due to the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved, and at the same time better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991-2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlighten them by proposing possible solutions

Personalisation of context-aware solutions supporting asthma management

Personalisation of asthma management plans is important because asthma patients experience different triggers and symptoms as a result of the high heterogeneity level of the condition. Although this makes context-awareness suitable to support asthma management, existing context-aware solutions do not allow patients to personalise their management plans. This research proposes an approach to develop context-aware solutions allowing the personalisation of asthma management plans. It is derived on the basis of the literature review and a qualitative research that includes both asthma patients and carers. A prototype to illustrate the application of the approach is demonstrated

Exploring the Needs and Preferences for a Diabetes Self-Management Program in Hispanics Living in the Central Valley of California

Diabetes mellitus type 2 is an ever increasing threat to the health of people living in the United States, especially those of Hispanic ethnicity. This ethnic group is disproportionately afflicted with the chronic condition and is also more likely than non-Hispanic whites to suffer from serious complications of diabetes. This project examines this growing problem among Hispanics living in the Central Valley of California by exploring how best to structure diabetes self-management education in a network of community health centers. The Social Cognitive Theory provides a theoretical basis for investigation into motivation for diabetes self-management. This needs assessment specifically explored data on barriers to diabetes care, patient education preferences, and existing diabetes knowledge by asking subjects to complete two low-literacy bilingual surveys. Ninety-four completed survey packets from two health center locations were received. Data analysis revealed that the sample was relatively homogenous demographically. Education preferences showed strong support for individual education sessions with certified diabetes educators or patients’ regular medical providers, preferably Hispanic individuals. The need for diabetes education is supported by an average score of roughly 50% correct on the diabetes knowledge surveys. Recommendations resulting from this data center on utilizing diabetes educators within the health centers

The Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring

Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patient’s identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations

Exploring the Needs and Preferences for a Diabetes Self-Management Program in Hispanics Living in the Central Valley of California

Diabetes mellitus type 2 is an ever increasing threat to the health of people living in the United States, especially those of Hispanic ethnicity. This ethnic group is disproportionately afflicted with the chronic condition and is also more likely than non-Hispanic whites to suffer from serious complications of diabetes. This project examines this growing problem among Hispanics living in the Central Valley of California by exploring how best to structure diabetes self-management education in a network of community health centers. The Social Cognitive Theory provides a theoretical basis for investigation into motivation for diabetes self-management. This needs assessment specifically explored data on barriers to diabetes care, patient education preferences, and existing diabetes knowledge by asking subjects to complete two low-literacy bilingual surveys. Ninety-four completed survey packets from two health center locations were received. Data analysis revealed that the sample was relatively homogenous demographically. Education preferences showed strong support for individual education sessions with certified diabetes educators or patients’ regular medical providers, preferably Hispanic individuals. The need for diabetes education is supported by an average score of roughly 50% correct on the diabetes knowledge surveys. Recommendations resulting from this data center on utilizing diabetes educators within the health centers

Barriers to Goal Attainment in Type Two Diabetics

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic disease that has reached epidemic proportions worldwide and is a leading cause of death in the United States. Despite the significant risk to morbidity and mortality, the most effective diabetes treatment is still unclear. Implementation of diabetes self-management education (DSME) programs is one method to address the educational needs of patients with T2DM. Barriers to goal attainment need to be more fully addressed if these education programs are to be successful in helping patients make positive behavioral changes. This project implemented shared medical appointments to provide DSME, address barriers to goal attainment, and encourage healthy behavior changes including healthy eating, being active, taking medication, monitoring blood glucose, problem solving, healthy coping, and reducing risks as outlined by the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE; Mulcahy et al, 2003). Through use of DSME, these behavior changes, AADE7 (AADE, 2017), and the barriers to goal attainment were addressed. The group process was used during these appointments to allow patients to brainstorm ideas to overcome barriers and support patient individually setting goals. Initial and final self-efficacy scores and HbA1Cs were compared to determine if there was an improvement using this intervention. Both self-efficacy scores and HgA1Cs had statistically significant improvements with implementation of the project. Barriers identified were perceived as iv less following the project. This project provided a new strategy for approaching diabetes education and management. Outcomes from this project supported the continued use of shared medical appointments to provide DSME and development of a template for providers and/or care managers to use for patient education and management

DIABETES AND TECHNOLOGY FOR INCREASED ACTIVITY (DaTA)

Physical inactivity is a primary target for prevention of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Rural Canadians are at increased risk of metabolic syndrome - a clustering of risk factors preceding these conditions. This study investigated feasibility and effectiveness of a stage-matched physical activity intervention using novel self­ monitoring technologies in rural adults with metabolic syndrome. Adherence to self­ monitoring protocols was \u3e94%. Stage of change increased by 1 stage (p=0.001). Physical activity increased from 5579 ± 1964 steps/day at week 1 to 7818 ± 4235 steps/day at week 8 (p=0.02). V02max increased by 17% (p\u3c0.05). BMI decreased from 33.1 to 32.7 (p=0.016). Participants were comfortable using the technology, found it easy- to-use, of low burden, and perceived it positively. This pilot study shows that this stage- matched technology intervention for increased physical activity was feasible and effective in high-risk adults in rural Ontario

Data Analytics: Preparing and exploiting data for value

This Data Analytics (DA) position paper presents an overview in summary form of key literature (academic and practitioner) that has informed the shape and scope of the Data Analytics (DA) Critical Capability (CC) of IT-CMF in the digital business context