AMA's Response to the Diabetes Epidemic

According to the CDC, 29 million Americans currently have diabetes. If current trends continue, an estimated 1 in 5 will have diabetes by 2050. The economic burden of diabetes is estimated at $245 billion annually in medical costs plus lost productivity. Fortunately, there is a growing body of evidence that type 2 diabetes is largely preventable through lifestyle change interventions.

Of the nearly one billion visits that Americans make to office-based physicians annually, more than half are to primary care physicians. These visits represent potential opportunities for counseling patients about lifestyle change interventions. However, physicians and care teams must focus on patients’ acute problems during such visits, with little time available for lifestyle counseling. The growing availability of community-based lifestyle change programs offers a feasible alternative that care teams can use to refer patients for evidence-based behavioral counseling.

In 2013, the American Medical Association launched a strategic focus on cardiovascular disease and diabetes. A key part of this initiative is diabetes prevention by bridging the gap between primary care and community resources. In this session, presenters will describe the AMA’s strategy for assisting clinical practices in implementing new processes for identifying patients with prediabetes and referring them to the YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program. The presentation will review the clinical practice recruitment process and outline how it overcame the barriers to setting up the prediabetes screening and referral system. The session will also include a discussion on the positive health outcomes resulting from enhanced screening and referral processes while outlining the key principles associated with successful clinical-community linkages. Results from the AMA’s 2014-15 prediabetes initiative will be presented with examples of referral models and their adaptability in a variety of healthcare settings.