“A Growing Health Problem”
Ten years ago, the CDC launched the National DPP, designed to be delivered by health providers and educators, to try to address this growing health problem. Research has proven that the National DPP can be highly effective, but the program has yet to reach many of the people who need it most, many of them in rural and medically disadvantaged communities. As a key provider of health education, especially in underserved areas, Cooperative Extension is in a prime position to bring this lifestyle change program to those at highest risk for this chronic disease, including those already diagnosed with prediabetes (higher than normal blood sugar), which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart attack, and stroke. Although prediabetes can be detected through simple screening, it’s often undiagnosed and roughly 8 out of 10 people with prediabetes don’t know they have it. But because of the CDC’s implementation requirements for the DPP and the program’s complexity, many Extension professionals may feel like they don’t have the time or resources to implement it. This toolkit is designed to make it easier for Extension professionals to provide the DPP in their communities. The idea for this toolkit was born in 2017, when Extension professionals from several southern states came together to apply for CDC funding to support an effort to scale up the DPP throughout Extension, across the “diabetes belt . ” The funding was not awarded, but the group remained intact and grew to include Extension peers from across the country. The group members agreed that they had had a toolkit like this, it would have saved them a lot of time, so the DPP toolkit team began pooling its lessons learned, tips, sample budgets, recruitment materials, etc. These resources became the basis of a website, which has recently been revamped.
The DPP toolkit now includes these resources:
program startup checklists
webinars to help state Extension services promote diabetes prevention classes and retain participants surveys to measure the effectiveness of classes
guidelines for delivering the program remotely
a discussion board for connecting with other DPP leaders
TOOLS IN THE TOOL KIT
Future versions may offer the following:
case studies about success in implementing best practices a roadmap for fast- tracking DPP implementation
implementation manuals
templates/steps for reporting outcomes to the CDC newsletter/text templates for communicating with DPP participants guidance for getting Medicare reimbursement a bilingual version of the toolkit
(See “Tools in the Toolkit” for the resources the website now includes.)
The DPP toolkit team’s work has been influenced by Cooperative Extension’s National Framework for Health and Wellness, published in 2014, and the National Framework for Health Equity and Well-Being, published in 2021, which is organized around the themes of health equity, social determinants of health, and working
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