Grant: Team Grant: Transitions in Care

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) requires regular medical visits, constant daily care and multiple decision making to control blood sugar levels and prevent complications. When transitioning to adulthood, youth living with T1D have to progressively gain independence in caring for their diabetes and need to change medical teams switching from the pediatric to the adult health care system. This arises at an age where youth have specific challenges impacting their diabetes such as moving out and starting school/work. This is a turning point, as we often see them disappearing from the health system for a few years with the management of their diabetes deteriorating. We propose to examine how an online training and peer support platform could help this transition to adult care in 17 years old youth. We initially developed an online training and peer support platform which aims to improve diabetes management skills in adults with T1D. With help from adolescents and young adult living with T1D and their healthcare providers, we have adapted it to better respond to their needs. We now want to test if this new platform, SUPPORT-T, can help with youth's diabetes management (evaluated through a blood test: hemoglobin A1c) and reduce distress associated with diabetes. Access to SUPPORT-T may improve their management skills, diabetes knowledge, quality of life and lessen the number of severe low blood sugar episodes. We will divide participants in two groups. Both groups will receive usual care, but the intervention group will have access to SUPPORT-T. At 3 time-points (beginning, 12- and 24 months) we will ask them to fill out questionnaires and to do a test by finger pricking (hemoglobin A1c, sent at home) to keep track of their evolution. The collected data will be compared between both groups. This platform is a potentially cost-effective approach to offer more support during the transition in care. Working with our partners, we will explore how to implement it on a larger scale.