Taking on Diabetes is a joint initiative of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP). As one of its three components, Taking on Diabetes is fostering the development of "Community Partnerships" that bring together health plans and other actors within a single market to collaborate on quality improvement initiatives for diabetes prevention, education, and management. Three Community Partnerships are presently underway. Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Westchester County, New York and Kansas City, Missouri, the three Partnerships are similar in their strategy of working to improve diabetes care by targeting health plans and physicians. They are different in their primary goals, which range from developing community-wide care and performance standards in Albuquerque, developing community-wide guidelines and practice tools in New York, and a state-wide effort to coordinate individual health plan interventions in Kansas. There are two primary research questions: (a) What attributes and events resulted in competing organizations coming together for this initiative? (b) Once the community established its Partnership, did the process of diabetes care improve? This multidisciplinary, mixed methods study drew on socio-economics and health services research to build a logistic regression model identifying the key market characteristics necessary for collaboration to occur. Nominal group meetings with key participants and content analysis of program documents identified the "human" characteristics that led to realization of the collaborative potential. Implications for sustainability and replicability for various community/health plan approaches to conditions such as asthma will be presented.
Learning Objectives: 1. Describe 3 innovative community partnerships addressing diabetes care. 2. Identify the characteristics and conditions necessary for collaboration. 3. Identify characteristics likely to ensure sustainability. 4. Identify the characteristics likely to foster replicability in other communities, and for other chronic conditions.
Keywords: Diabetes, Community Collaboration
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.