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Mobile health initiative uses information technology to increase diabetes awareness

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ADA 71st Scientific Sessions

SAN DIEGO — Together, the American Diabetes Association, the CDC and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology are developing a new health initiative to help increase the use of information technology for the prevention and management of diabetes.

A 3-year capstone project of the HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology — the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program — is at the forefront of the initiative. It will provide funding to 17 health information technology “information hubs” in diverse US communities. This fall, two of those communities — Southeast Michigan Beacon Community in Detroit, Mich. and the Crescent City Beacon Community in New Orleans, La. — will kick off a mobile health campaign to provide health and wellness resources to patients with type 2 diabetes.

About 385,000 people in Louisiana are living with diabetes, according to Vivian Fonseca, MD, chief of the section of endocrinology at Tulane University Health Sciences Center. The need to reach people with diabetes is also great in Wayne County, Mich., where 21% of the population has type 1 or 2 diabetes, Robin Nwankwo, RD, MPH, CDE, an ADA volunteer on the leadership board for the Michigan and Northern Ohio market, said in a press release.

The mobile health pilots in Detroit and New Orleans will be modeled after the national Text4Baby campaign, which was founded in-part by leading mobile health provider Voxiva. The campaign sends evidence-based health tips to pregnant women and new mothers via text message. Voxiva will also develop and provide the services for the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program.

The program is designed to reach individuals with undiagnosed diabetes and those at risk for the disease by providing the ability to engage with a large population via information technology while also tailoring information to each patient based on individual risk factors. In most cases, this means ensuring patients connect to medical professionals who can help them manage their condition before costly complications arise, according to a press release. During the next 2 months, the campaigns will be designed and tested in Detroit and New Orleans.

“While we will be developing the specifics of the technology, we know for sure this will be a community-wide effort,” Anjum Khurshid, PhD, MBBS, MPAff, director of Health Systems Development and project director of the Crescent City Beacon Community in New Orleans, said during the press briefing. “We will involve community organizations and different players within the community; we aren’t looking at this just as a technology intervention, we are looking at it as a community campaign.”

For Herbert C. Smitherman, Jr., MD, MPH, assistant dean of community and urban health at Wayne State University Medical Center, “this is an opportunity to demonstrate and learn how to do this effectively in basic, smaller communities; once we get the kinks out of it then [we’ll] scale it up to larger communities,” he said at the press briefing.

To further the most effective use of health IT approaches in addressing specific health and health care challenges, the ADA, CDC, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Beacon Communities will collaborate with other stakeholders that wish to run similar campaigns in the future.

“[W]e need to leverage the various aspects, skills and talents that a variety of perspectives can bring to the table,” Ann Albright, PhD, RD, director of the CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation, said during a press conference. “We need the local practitioners and the people who are managing community organizations; we need to be able to bring a lot of effort to scale because … we’re talking about a nationwide epidemic. It really is calling upon all of us to join forces to utilize and leverage technology to do this.” – by Stacey L. Fisher

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