Mobilizing communities: local applications of the Diabetes Today national training center project.

In 1992, the Division of Diabetes Translation developed the Diabetes Today program to train representatives of state and local health departments on how to develop, implement, and evaluate community-based diabetes prevention and control programs. This commentary briefly describes the evolution of the Diabetes Today program in the United States. The Diabetes Today program utilizes a training curriculum to increase expertise in community assessment; coalition building; adult-learn principle, program planning, implementation, and evaluation. The training curriculum contains four modules: defining diabetes and mobilizing a community response; assessing diabetes in your community; planning your diabetes program, and evaluating your diabetes program. Two versions of the curriculum have been utilized--one in English and the other in Spanish. This commentary presents two examples of Diabetes Today efforts--The Missouri Diabetes Control and Prevention (English) and the United States/Mexico Border Diabetes Project (Spanish version)--to briefly describe how this program planning, implementation, and evaluation model can generate a community response to diabetes.