Grant: Operating Grant

Currently, five million Canadians meet the criteria for pre-diabetes. Lifestyle modification programs like the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) have been shown to be very effective in preventing the progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes. However, such programs are expensive because they are delivered in one-on-one sessions by highly trained professionals. Group-delivered versions of the DPP are cheaper, but are considerably less effective. We propose that the effectiveness of the Group-DPP can be increased by integrating tools into the program that help people creating new eating and physical activity habits and maintaining these habits in the long-term. Specifically, we propose to integrate if-then plans (concrete action plans that specify when, where, and how one will carry out a new behaviour) and their mental practice into the Group-DPP curriculum. To test the hypothesis that habit-creating tools render the Group-DPP more effective, we will conduct a randomized controlled trial in which participants with pre-diabetes will be assigned to either the standard Group-DPP or its enriched version. In the enriched version, if-then plans and their mental practice will be integrated into each session of the program based on methods we have developed and tested in our past research. We expect that (1) the enriched Group-DPP will lead to greater weight loss and a greater reduction in other pre-diabetes-relevant risk outcomes than the standard Group-DPP, (2) the habit formation in the enriched Group-DPP will occur faster and newly formed habits will be sustained for a longer period of time than in the standard Group-DPP, and (3) the greater effectiveness of the enriched Group-DPP will be due to stronger habit formation. Significance: This research can, without adding costs, make future diabetes prevention programs more effective, thereby reducing diabetes rates.