Evaluation of a Behavioral Intervention With Multiple Components Among Low-Income and Uninsured Adults With Obesity and Diabetes.

PURPOSE: To examine the effects of a community-based behavioral intervention with multiple components on health outcomes among low-income and uninsured adults who were obese and had diabetes and treated in a "real-world" setting. DESIGN: A longitudinal design with a retrospective comparison group was used to examine the ability of a health promotion program to improve body mass index (BMI) and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) among 87 treatment group and 62 comparison group participants. SETTING: Urban/metropolitan city in the United States. INTERVENTION: A community-based behavioral intervention with 3 components including health-coach visits, registered dietitian visits, and exercise consultations delivered over 12 months. MEASURES: Biometric measurements were collected at baseline, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 18 months, whereas self-reported measurements were collected at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. ANALYSIS: Linear mixed models with participant-level random intercepts were fitted for BMI and HbA1c. RESULTS: The treatment group demonstrated reductions in BMI (percentage change = -2.1%, P < .001) and HbA1c (-0.6%, P < .001) as well as improvement in diabetes knowledge (+5.4%, P = .025), whereas the comparison group did not show any improvements in biometric measures. Dietitian visits were the most effective treatment component to reduce HbA1c (coefficient = -0.08, P = .025). CONCLUSION: Multiple component behavioral intervention in community settings, particularly when delivered by registered dietitians, shows promise to combat the dual epidemic of obesity and diabetes among low-income and uninsured patients.

Alabama Physicians and Accountable Care Organizations: Will What We Don't Know Hurt Us?

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) were designed to improve the quality of care delivered to Medicare beneficiaries while also halting the growth in Medicare spending. Many existing health systems in the Northeast, Midwest, and West have formed ACOs, whereas implementation in Southern states has been slower. The study team conducted a survey of all physician members of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama to determine the likelihood of their participation in an ACO and their attitudes toward some of the characteristics, such as quality measures, regulations, and risks versus rewards. The team found that many physicians reported a lack of knowledge about these areas. Physicians who reported that they were either likely or not likely to participate overwhelmingly held unfavorable attitudes about ACOs. It would be advantageous for Alabama physicians to become more knowledgeable about ACOs in the case that they become a more predominant form of care delivery in the future.

Healthcare cost savings estimator tool for chronic disease self-management program: a new tool for program administrators and decision makers.

Chronic disease self-management education (CDSME) programs have been delivered to more than 100,000 older Americans with chronic conditions. As one of the Stanford suite of evidence-based CDSME programs, the chronic disease self-management program (CDSMP) has been disseminated in diverse populations and settings. The objective of this paper is to introduce a practical, universally applicable tool to assist program administrators and decision makers plan implementation efforts and make the case for continued program delivery. This tool was developed utilizing data from a recent National Study of CDSMP to estimate national savings associated with program participation. Potential annual healthcare savings per CDSMP participant were calculated based on averted emergency room visits and hospitalizations. While national data can be utilized to estimate cost savings, the tool has built-in features allowing users to tailor calculations based on their site-specific data. Building upon the National Study of CDSMP's documented potential savings of $3.3 billion in healthcare costs by reaching 5% of adults with one or more chronic conditions, two heuristic case examples were also explored based on different population projections. The case examples show how a small county and large metropolitan city were not only able to estimate healthcare savings ($38,803 for the small county; $732,290 for the large metropolitan city) for their existing participant populations but also to project significant healthcare savings if they plan to reach higher proportions of middle-aged and older adults. Having a tool to demonstrate the monetary value of CDSMP can contribute to the ongoing dissemination and sustainability of such community-based interventions. Next steps will be creating a user-friendly, internet-based version of Healthcare Cost Savings Estimator Tool: CDSMP, followed by broadening the tool to consider cost savings for other evidence-based programs.

Factors Associated with Successful Completion of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program among Middle-Aged and Older Asian-American Participants: A National Study.

Asian-Americans are a small but fast-growing population in the United States who are increasingly experiencing multiple chronic diseases. While the evidence-based Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) has been disseminated among various racial and ethnic populations, few studies specifically investigate participants with an Asian background. The study aims to identify characteristics of middle-aged and older Asian-American CDSMP participants (older than 50 years) and investigate factors related to successful workshop completion (i.e., attending 4+ of the 6 sessions) among this population. Data were analyzed from 2,716 middle-aged and older Asian-Americans collected during a 2-year national dissemination of CDSMP. Multilevel logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify individual- and workshop-level covariates related to successful workshop completion. The majority of participants were female, living with others, and living in metro areas. The average age was 71.3 years old (±9.2), and the average number of chronic conditions was 2.0 (±1.5). Successful completion of CDSMP workshops among participants was associated with their number of chronic conditions (OR = 1.10, P = 0.011), living in non-metro areas (OR = 1.77, P = 0.009), attending workshops from area agencies on aging (OR = 1.56, P = 0.018), and attending a workshop with higher completion rates (OR = 1.03, P < 0.001). This study is the first large-scale examination of Asian-American participants enrolled in CDSMP and highlights characteristics related to intervention attendance among this under-studied minority population. Knowing such characteristics is important for serving the growing number of Asian-Americans with chronic conditions.

Methods for streamlining intervention fidelity checklists: an example from the chronic disease self-management program.

Maintaining intervention fidelity should be part of any programmatic quality assurance (QA) plan and is often a licensure requirement. However, fidelity checklists designed by original program developers are often lengthy, which makes compliance difficult once programs become widely disseminated in the field. As a case example, we used Stanford's original Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) fidelity checklist of 157 items to demonstrate heuristic procedures for generating shorter fidelity checklists. Using an expert consensus approach, we sought feedback from active master trainers registered with the Stanford University Patient Education Research Center about which items were most essential to, and also feasible for, assessing fidelity. We conducted three sequential surveys and one expert group-teleconference call. Three versions of the fidelity checklist were created using different statistical and methodological criteria. In a final group-teleconference call with seven national experts, there was unanimous agreement that all three final versions (e.g., a 34-item version, a 20-item version, and a 12-item version) should be made available because the purpose and resources for administering a checklist might vary from one setting to another. This study highlights the methodology used to generate shorter versions of a fidelity checklist, which has potential to inform future QA efforts for this and other evidence-based programs (EBP) for older adults delivered in community settings. With CDSMP and other EBP, it is important to differentiate between program fidelity as mandated by program developers for licensure, and intervention fidelity tools for providing an "at-a-glance" snapshot of the level of compliance to selected program indicators.