medwireNews: A pilot study suggests that patients may be more diligent attenders of the US National Diabetes Prevention Program (NDPP) if they first attend a pre-course session focused on the program’s goals and barriers to its attendance.
These presessions were introduced to the Denver, Colorado, area in September 2016, and the first 75 patients who attended one of these presessions subsequently remained in the NDPP for an average of 190.6 days, compared with 96.4 days for 1065 patients referred to the program before this date, attending an average of 48.7% versus 34.8% of NDPP sessions.
This was associated with better weight loss outcomes, with presession attendees and non-attendees losing an average 3.5% and 1.6% of their bodyweight, respectively, and 40.0% versus 18.3% losing at least 5%.
The presession, which was held 1–3 weeks before the start of the NDPP sessions, focused on diabetes education, goal-setting, and issues such as barriers to attendance, which included emphasizing that participants could benefit even if they missed some sessions.
Despite the impressive results, Natalie Ritchie (University of Colorado, Denver, USA), who presented the findings at the ADA’s 78th Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Florida, USA, asked whether the presessions themselves result in improved attendance “or is this simply a screening mechanism by which we’re filtering out people who aren’t ready for the program?”
A randomized trial may be necessary to decide, she said.
The findings are also published in the American Journal of Health Promotion.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2018 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group
See also: