Two new DESMOND education programmes to be launched in 2008 have the potential to reach thousands more people currently affected by diabetes.
The new Foundation programme will enable the 69 local health care trusts currently delivering DESMOND to extend the programme to benefit people with established diabetes. While the South Asian version of DESMOND will enable a population at high risk of the complications of diabetes to access culturally appropriate education whether delivered in English, or in the mother tongues of Bengali, Gujerati, Punjabi or Urdu.
Foundation DESMOND has drawn on the responses and feedback of partners, family members and friends who accompanied one of the newly diagnosed participants to the very first DESMOND programmes delivered in 2004-2007. It soon became apparent that because many of these people had diabetes themselves, they had as keen an interest in the programme as those they were accompanying. “If only this kind of thing had been available when I was diagnosed…” was a familiar comment reported at many of the groups.
On behalf of the DESMOND Project, a team of volunteer Educators and Trainers reviewed the course material and curriculum and piloted a revised version of the newly diagnosed programme with groups of people whose experience of living with diabetes spanned between 2-18 years.
The results showed that with very little change, the original programme was extremely suitable for people with diabetes however long they had been living with the condition.
The new pack, which is now being made available free of charge to all registered DESMOND Educators, means that without need for further training, local areas have the resources to provide suitable education to people with established diabetes.
The South Asian version of the DESMOND programme provides a similar opportunity for people for whom a more culturally relevant programme is needed. Working in partnership with colleagues in the University of Leicester, and the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, the DESMOND Team have developed new resources, and training to enable Educators and interpreters to work effectively together to deliver the new programme.
As an added bonus, the new sets of images and pictures used by participants and as teaching aids, will have a wider relevance.
In areas of the country where literacy skills are low, the images can be used with English versions of the Newly Diagnosed and Foundation programmes to support participants in completing their personal action plans and goal setting.
The result is to provide effective education which gives access to these hard-to-reach groups in the community, who are most at risk of the complications of diabetes.
DESMOND is now the local structured education programme of choice for 70 healthcare organisations across Great Britain and Ireland, for people newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. And with an ever-growing ‘waiting-list’ to take up the newly diagnosed module, demand for training is at an all-time high.
Tim Taylor was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in December 2004 – 3 days before Christmas. Some of the very first DESMOND programmes were running in his local area, and his GP offered him the chance to attend. Did it make a difference for Tim?