through coalitions to increase community health assets. This framework provides an important rationale for the team’s work and inspires the team to think about what it does in bigger and broader ways.
Planned Outcomes
Reducing the incidence of type 2 diabetes is the primary purpose of this program. The DPP toolkit developers hope to see an increased number of Extension professionals getting the funding to deliver a DPP and being fully recognized by the CDC for their diabetes prevention work. The DPP toolkit team also hopes to see an increased number of Extension teams applying to be Medicare suppliers for the DPP, which is uncharted territory for
The DPP toolkit team also hopes to see an increased number of Extension teams applying to be Medicare suppliers for the DPP.
Extension that offers tremendous cost-recovery potential. The developers and the national Extension DPP coalition to which they belong also are working to aggregate their data and show collective impact across Extension. Qualitative data will be important, too, because diabetes prevention work is human work. If the toolkit team can gather video stories, testimonials, and case studies from participants and educators, it can put human faces on the program, sharing testimonials with potential program participants, with Extension educators, directors, and administrations, and with legislators and other stakeholders. This kind of input could go a long way toward demonstrating the impact of this work.
The Future of the DPP
There may be opportunities for Extension to scale the DPP by identifying and tapping into partnerships and funding models it doesn’t traditionally access. Establishing a national collaboration with the CDC could accelerate the opportunity to scale in a sustainable way. Partnering with state health departments is another model a few states have used successfully.
One strategy worth exploring is for Extension programs to become Medicare DPP providers to receive insurance reimbursement for programmatic work. This is a novel approach and would be a large undertaking. Another would be to have a single state complete the process and model it for others. Yet another approach might be to collaborate with the CDC in other ways. A model for this may exist in the Extension Collaborative on Immunization Teaching and Engagement (EXCITE) program. Created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the program represents a partnership between the Extension Foundation and the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy, through an interagency agreement with the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the CDC. The EXCITE program is open to all land grant universities and addresses some of the critical challenges in diabetes prevention work: health literacy, health disparity, and access to healthy lifestyle education.
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