Together on Diabetes^®: A Community Control Project for Seniors

In November 2010, the Fund received a $2.8 million grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation as part of a larger national effort to tackle diabetes.  The three-year grant is enabling the Fund to develop and test a diabetes community control project targeting seniors with diabetes in two New York City communities.  Its focus on seniors already diagnosed with diabetes distinguishes the Fund’s initiative from most of the work tackling diabetes across the nation.

Central to the project’s approach is forging new  partnerships between community service organizations, businesses, and the key health care providers to work together to  help seniors gain or maintain control of their diabetes and minimize the risks of serious complications.  The partnerships will link health care providers with a wide range of trusted community groups and local businesses—senior centers, social services organizations, churches, grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacies, beauty parlors, and more—each playing a role in helping seniors work toward a balance of healthy diet, physical activity, and appropriate medical management. The new initiative draws heavily on the Fund’s experience with implementing community-based strategies to improve the health of seniors in naturally occurring retirement communities, or NORCS.

To ensure that the experience of the initiative will be helpful to policy makers, the Fund will rigorously evaluate both the process of creating the partnerships and their effect on seniors’ health and well-being.  The Fund also is working closely with the two most relevant city agencies—the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department  for the Aging—in the design of the initiative.

Selection of the First Community—Washington Heights/Inwood

The Washington Heights/Inwood community was selected as the project’s first community.  It was chosen for several reasons, including:
1.  Washington Heights/Inwood has a high prevalence of seniors with diabetes. According to New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene estimates, more than a quarter of seniors (age 60+) in the community have diabetes.
2.  These seniors (approximately 10,000) accounted for more than 4,500 hospital encounters (either an emergency room visit or an inpatient hospitalization) in 2008, with diabetes the primary diagnosis.
3.  The community has a strong  senior-serving network upon which a strategy can be built.
4.  Diabetes is already recognized as an important issue in the community, and health care providers, a range of community organizations, and relevant city agencies are committed to forging working partnerships.
5.  There is already a Health Information Technology infrastructure in the community, which may prove to be an important resource.

The United Hospital Fund has begun to form a steering committee to mobilize community participation, and the following are among the initial members:

• Washington Heights/Inwood Council on Aging
• NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
• Isabella Geriatric Center
• Columbia University Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research
• New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
• New York City Department for the Aging

A second community will be selected in the program’s second year.
 

Together on Diabetes^®

The $2.8 million grant the Fund received from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation is part of a new, five-year, $100 million initiative called Together on Diabetes^®:  Communities Uniting to Meet America’s Diabetes Challenge.   The initiative represents the largest corporate philanthropic commitment to fight diabetes in the country.  The Fund was chosen as one of the first four initial grantees;  the other three are national organizations of family physicians, diabetes educators, and pharmacists.

Contact: Fredda Vladeck