Strategies for reducing morbidity and mortality from diabetes through health-care system interventions and diabetes self-management education in community settings. A report on recommendations of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services.

Reducing morbidity and mortality and improving quality of life for persons with diabetes is an ongoing challenge for health-care providers and organizations and public health practitioners. Interventions are available that focus on persons with diabetes, health-care systems, families, and public policies. The Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force) has conducted systematic reviews of seven population-oriented interventions that can be implemented by health-care organizations and communities. Two of these interventions focus on health-care systems (disease and case management), and five focus on persons with diabetes (diabetes self-management education delivered in community settings). On the basis of these reviews, the Task Force has made recommendations regarding use of these seven interventions. The Task Force strongly recommends disease and case management in health-care systems for persons with diabetes. Diabetes self-management education is recommended in community gathering places (e.g., community centers or faith institutions) for adults and in the home for children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Evidence was insufficient to recommend diabetes self-management education interventions in other settings (i.e., schools, work sites, and recreational camps) or in the home for adults with type 2 diabetes. This report provides additional information regarding these recommendations, briefly describes how the reviews were conducted, provides sources of full reviews of interventions and information to assist in applying the interventions locally, and describes additional diabetes-related work in progress.