Vision and eye health diabetes community-based curriculum module

Diabetes is a common, costly, yet controllable chronic disease.Healthy People 2010 focuses an entire chapter on diabetes and many of the Vision and Eye Health Objectives in Chapter 28 relate directly or indirectly to the impact of diabetes on an individual's ability to maintain normal healthy vision. This presentation discusses the updating and incorporation of a Vision and Eye Health Module into a well-established, evidence-based rural diabetes health education program. The original curriculum, “Dining with Diabetes: A Program for People with Diabetes and their Families”, was developed in 1998 by the West Virginia University Extension Service. It has been delivered more than 200 times to nearly 5,000 participants with positive evaluations from participants, extension educators, and health care professionals. “Dining with Diabetes” is a community-based curriculum with food demonstrations providing a dimension to diabetes education that is not routinely available in clinical settings. The goal for the “Dining with Diabetes” curriculum is to improve the ability of individuals living with diabetes and their families to make healthier food choices and lifestyle decisions to promote good management of their disease. The development of the Vision and Eye Health Module came as a result of requests from attendees and presenters for “…more on diabetes control and the complications. “ Program evaluation consists of clinical indicators such as Hemoglobin A1c, blood pressure (pre- and post) Questionnaire: (1) demographics; (2) attitudes, behaviors, knowledge related to the self-management of diabetes (pre- and post-), nutrition, exercise; open-ended questions.