The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded the Gateway Community Health Center, Inc., a 15-month grant in support of improving the delivery of diabetes self-management. The $299,266 grant will fund Gateway's participation with five other programs in the country in a learning network to develop and pilot-test multi-component self-management programs for primary care settings. A basic objective of the Advancing Diabetes Self-Management initiative is to motivate patients with the disease and their families to become more involved in their own care. While medical advances in the treatment of diabetes have been considerable, they will go for naught unless the patients themselves become more involved in the self-management of the disease.
Center CEO Miguel Treviño, Jr., was elated with the news. "We are proud to have been one of six sites selected to participate in the initiative out of a pool of more than 300 applicants throughout the nation for this grant," he said.
Diabetes is one of the most serious community health problems in Webb County. Unfortunately, the incidence of the disease in Webb County is one of the highest in the State, according to Treviño, who also reported that over 18% of the overall patient visits at the Center are for the treatment of diabetes.
Gateway has been a leader in the state in implementing the concept of diabetes self-management for diabetes patients in the community. Five members of the Center's staff already have been certified as master self-management trainers. A weekly diabetes self-management class is being conducted at the Center and the number of classes will be expanded. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will support two additional health promoters, promotoras as they are known locally, to join the efforts of the current self-management staff.
Lucy García, BSN, the Center's director of patient services, will serve as the project director of the initiative. She will be assisted by Lourdes Rangel, director of special services at the Center. Otilia García will serve as the project's self-management coordinator. The Center will be acquiring the services of a full-time certified diabetes educator to participate in the initiative.
A goal of the initiative is to provide self-management classes to 300 registered diabetes patients at the Center who are being cared for by three internal medicine specialists, Dr. Carlos Casas, Dr. Armando R. Hinojosa, Jr., and Dr. Angelica Flores. Dr. Casas also serves as the Center's medical director.
Gateway Community Health Center has taken a lead role in addressing the high rate of diabetes in the community. The Center's efforts at informing the community about diabetes began in 1992 with a community-based diabetes education grant from the Texas Department of Health's Texas Diabetes Council. This program became known as Lado-A-Lado, Laredo Against Diabetes and Obesity. When this grant ended, Gateway was awarded another grant from the Texas Diabetes Council, the Diabetes Awareness and Education in the Community Program, that is currently in operation.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Advances in Diabetes Self-Management program begins this month and continues through April 2004. The first nine months of program operations will concentrate upon the development of models of self-management by the six program participants, including the Gateway Community Health Center, and the final six months of the program will be devoted to evaluating the models.