Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

There is an urgent need to improve health equity and outcomes for individuals living with and managing chronic conditions, including diabetes. Recent research demonstrates that individuals with diabetes often do not have a clear understanding and knowledge of diabetes and the fundamental role that self-care management could play to avoid potential complications of diabetes. Moreover, healthcare providers often fail to understand that self-care management is particular to each person and that it is affected by contextual factors, including social determinants of health. We are not aware of any self-care management program for seniors with diabetes that have involved participants and providers to plan, design, implement and evaluate the intervention. The proposed consultation will engage seniors living with diabetes to plan the most appropriate ways to develop self-care management programs that will account for individual needs and preferences. In partnership with the South East Local Health Integration Network, and using a Participatory Action Research approach, the following objectives will be addressed: (1) engage seniors living with diabetes, healthcare providers and researchers in the process of organizing a community consultation; (2) hold one day community consultation to formulate the research process for the development, refinement, and evaluation of self-care management program for seniors living with diabetes; (3) develop a research proposal for the CIHR-Project Program based on the findings from Objective 2 (Community Consultation) through a consensus method; and (4) publish one community report and one academic paper outlining the outcomes of this planning grant in an open access peer-reviewed journal.