Dr Gretchen Piatt
A church-based diabetes self-management support intervention that incorporated parish nurses and peer leaders is feasible and may help improve diabetes-related outcomes in participants.
Sustained reductions in hemoglobin A1c and diabetes distress were seen in the Praise Diabetes Project, a 33-month study that piloted several different approaches to parish nurse and peer leader support at 21 urban churches in Michigan and Ohio, said Gretchen Piatt, MPH, PhD, associate professor in the department of learning health sciences at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, reported at the annual scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association.
“Of the participants who achieved glycemic control following diabetes self-management education, a really large proportion – upward of 77% of participants across all the groups– achieved sustained glycemic control at 33 months,” Piatt said.
Findings from this study have helped diabetes educators better understand how to design effective support approaches that may have a long-term impact on glycemic control and diabetes distress, Piatt said.
The Praise Diabetes Project represents a “very smart strategy” of leveraging institutions that already exist in the African American community that are trusted and provide emotional support, said Tracey D. Brown, CEO of the ADA.
“This is about behavior change, really, at its crux,” Ms. Brown said in an interview. “To get there, you’ve got to have trust, and you have to have an emotional connection. If you don’t get either one of those things, then you really are not going to do anything in terms of changing behavior.”
Long-Term Solutions Needed
Many studies show that diabetes self-management education can improve clinical and psychosocial outcomes, and reduce health care utilization and cost, at least in the short term, Piatt said. However, it’s less clear how those improvements can be sustained over longer periods of time.
“This then presents a critical need to develop and evaluate diabetes self-management support models that are ongoing, patient driven, and embedded within existing community infrastructures,” Piatt said in her presentation.
Working with churches is one approach to working within existing community infrastructures: “Churches are embedded in the community, they have the personnel oftentimes to facilitate these types of health programs, and most importantly, they have the established relationships with the community that brings about sustained changes,” Piatt said in her presentation.
Addressing Diabetes Education Needs in Urban, Low-Resource Communities
The Praise Diabetes Project was a randomized, 33-month clinical trial conducted in 21 predominantly Black churches in Detroit; Flint, Mich.; and Toledo, Ohio, which are all urban, low-resource communities where diabetes is a significant public health problem, according to Piatt.
The study was designed to evaluate the relative effectiveness of three different approaches to diabetes self-management support at improving A1c and levels of diabetes distress, according to the investigators.
The churches were randomized to one of the support arms, including parish nurse plus peer leader support, parish nurse support by itself, or peer leader support by itself.
A total of 47 individuals were trained, including 31 peer leaders and 16 parish nurses.
All three interventions included an initial 6-month period of “enhanced usual care” during which biweekly newsletters were distributed, according to Piatt. That was followed by 12 months of diabetes self-management support, and an additional 12 months of ongoing support facilitated by parish nurses and peer leaders on their own, without input from the research team or health care providers.
Participants in the program had to be at least 21 years old and under the care of a physician for their diabetes, according to Piatt. The parish nurses had to be registered nurses in Michigan or Ohio. Peer leaders had to be at least 21 years old, had at least an eighth-grade education, and had to commit to a 30-hour training program.
Peer leaders also had to be individuals living with diabetes: “Prior studies have found that, when peer leaders are actively working on their own self-management goals, they tend to be much more successful in helping others,” Piatt explained.
In addition to facilitating diabetes self-management education, the parish nurses and peer leaders in these interventions were responsible for recruitment, church announcements, room reservations, follow-up calls to participants, according to Piatt. Parish nurses also provided clinical content knowledge and supervised the peer leaders in the combined model.
Sustained Reductions in A1c and Diabetes Distress
These diabetes self-management support approaches led to significant changes over time in A1c and diabetes distress, the primary outcomes of the study, Piatt said.
The peer leader support approach resulted in a statistically significant decline in A1c, from a mean of 8.0% at baseline to 7.7% at 33 months (P = .04), while nonsignificant declines were observed in the parish nurse and combined parish nurse–peer leader approach, according to the researcher.
Reductions in A1c persisted despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which began roughly 21 months into the study, she said.
Glycemic control remained steady over the course of the study, as illustrated by similar proportions of participants with A1c below 7% from baseline to 33 months, she added.
Sustained glycemic control was seen in all three groups, according to Piatt. For example, 42.7% of individuals in the parish nurse and peer leader support group achieved glycemic control following the intervention, and 88.5% of them sustained it at 33 months.
“I think this is one of the longest diabetes self-management education and diabetes self-management support interventions that’s out there right now, so we were so happy to see that sustained by glycemic control that far into the future,” she said.
Diabetes distress levels decreased steadily over time in all three groups, with declines that were statistically significant from baseline to 33 months in the parish nurse–only and peer leader–only groups, the investigator said.
The proportion of participants reporting moderate levels of diabetes distress dropped over time, especially in the peer leader support group, where there was a 50% reduction, she added.
Despite these findings, the study had limitations, according to Piatt, including some “burnout” that impacted participants, parish nurses, and peer leaders, especially after the pandemic started.
In addition, this type of intervention may have limited impact in the community at large: “We probably didn’t reach people who did not have good connection to the church,” Piatt said.
Piatt reported no conflicts of interest related to the research.
This article originally appeared on MDedge.com, part of the Medscape Professional Network.
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