A new collaborative National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) research project led by Clinical Professor Lin Perry of the University of Technology Sydney has been funded to develop and test a new model of diabetes services.

 

Partnering with the University of Newcastle, Hunter New England Local Health Network and the Australian Diabetes Council, the Youth OutReach for Diabetes (YOuR-Diabetes) project has received $735,989 of funding over four years.

 

Young people with diabetes are expected to learn to self-manage in their teens, before transferring from children's to adult health services. Few adult services specifically cater for young people, and orientation towards the needs of their predominantly older patients means that many young people fail to establish good relationships to support routine management of their diabetes.

 

"This collaborative research is about working with clinical staff to reconfigure services with the aims of engaging young people, so they are more satisfied with their routine services, and increasing their use of them in line with best practice," Professor Perry said. "This should result in improved diabetes control in the Hunter New England area. This hasn't been tested before, so this is ground-breaking research.

 

"The project will develop, implement and evaluate a 'systems navigation' model of transitional care for non-metropolitan young adults with type 1 diabetes. Currently, as young people move from children's to adult services, their contact with health care teams falls. They are expected to take more control of their diabetes, but receive less support.

 

"We want to improve the contact of young people with diabetes routine and preventive services, and their self-management knowledge and skills. This should improve indices of diabetes control such as Haemoglobin A1C levels and reduce their use of acute services for crisis management."

 

The program is a randomised controlled trial covering eight service clusters of the Hunter New England Local Health Network. The trial will look at the systems navigation model compared to current service models, assessing patient-level outcomes. A separate component is being run in collaboration with the Diabetes Centre at Prince of Wales Hospital and Sydney Children's Hospital.

 

Research findings will determine whether there is statistically significant difference between intervention and control group outcomes in relation to service effectiveness, which will inform future service redesign.

 

The project is due to be completed by the end of 2015.