Nurses on the Front-Line of Diabetes Prevention

Abstract

America is facing its first non-communicable, yet preventable, pandemic -Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) [1]. With approximately 14% of adults diagnosed with the disease and another 33% diagnosed with prediabetes, multiple stakeholders have committed to developing multilevel approaches to slow the rate of transition of prediabetes to T2DM [2]. Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is one evidence-based approach that has been referenced throughout many health care and health science journals. While physicians are noted as the gatekeepers of care, nurses and Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) are employed across the care continuum to affect the incidence and outcomes of diabetes prevention and prediabetes management. Nurses, among the key providers of health care, are positioned to facilitate the implementation of evidence-based interventions (EBI), like the DPP, from clinical practice into community-based settings. However, the DPP remains largely an under-utilized approached within health care. There seems to be a knowledge-gap about the DPP and its scalability across diverse patient populations. The purpose of this educational manuscript is three-fold: (1) to provide background on the Diabetes Prevention Program, its use and scalability to real-world settings, (2) to address some of the challenges of DPP across cultures, and (3) to increase awareness of how policy supports and improves populations’ access to the DPP and its translational delivery models – reducing the prevalence of prediabetes, and hence diabetes, in this country.