Prevention of type 2 diabetes--lessons we have learnt for implementation.

The challenge today is to implement successful diabetes prevention programs in general health care. Even if not all questions for the prevention of diabetes are answered, we have today overwhelming evidence that diabetes can be prevented or delayed in high risk population through lifestyle modification or pharmacological interventions. This information has to be translated now into well-defined strategies for screening and treating high risk population in daily practice. It is necessary then to develop and implement prevention programs into clinical practice considering scientific aspects and practical requirements during implementation. While translating the scientific evidence into population based intervention strategies more and more questions arise, mostly related to economic and structural requirements during implementation. At the end, giving the right answers to these questions will decide about the success of implemented prevention strategies. Here, we will try to answer some of the questions which arose during the implementation of a prevention management concept into clinical practice. We focus on the development of a structured prevention management program which will enable implementation of diabetes prevention into clinical practice.