Philadelphia Medicine Summer 2020 - 29

p h i l a m e d s o c .o rg

Philadelphia Makes Diabetes
Prevention a Priority
By: Alexis Skoufalos, EdD, and Mitchell Kaminski, MD, MBA

T

he National Diabetes Prevention Program (National DPP)
was created in 2010 to address the increasing burden of
type 2 diabetes. The National DPP lifestyle change program
designed for patients with pre-diabetes focuses on behavior changes
related to healthy eating and physical activity and has demonstrated
that its participants can reduce their risk of developing type 2
diabetes by 58% (71% for people over 60 years of age).1

The American Medical Association (AMA) and the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have joined with select
collaborators across the country to educate communities about
the risks associated with prediabetes, and steps individuals and
clinicians can take to potentially reverse the condition and prevent
the occurrence of type 2 diabetes.

With support from the AMA and CDC, the Jefferson College
of Population Health has taken on the task of serving as the
backbone organization for the Philadelphia Diabetes Prevention
Collaboration (PDPC), a regional initiative focused on diabetes
prevention in the five-county Greater Philadelphia area. PDPC
includes representatives from the key stakeholders mentioned above
and others, with a goal of making it to "2000 in 2020" - working
to enroll 2000 participants in a CDC-recognized National DPP
lifestyle change program by the end of 2020.

Members of the collaborative are bringing their collective resources
and expertise to bear with an unwavering focus on diabetes prevention. The group is working together to raise awareness among
clinicians and consumers; increase access to National DPP lifestyle
In 2019, the College of Population Health at Thomas Jefferson change programs in the area; and build capacity within organizaUniversity convened several meetings with key stakeholders to tions that want to offer the program. Working groups are laboring
assess the local landscape and determine how we could collab- to create an online resource to direct people to a local program;
orate to support a diabetes prevention initiative for the Greater training additional lifestyle coaches to deliver the CDC-approved
curriculum; making the National DPP lifestyle program available
Philadelphia region.
in multiple languages; and advocating for expanded coverage to
Statistics tell us that Philadelphia is the poorest and most diverse of make the program more widely available.
the nation's ten largest cities2 and ranks at the bottom of the state's
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the Philadelphia area particularly
67 counties in terms of health outcomes.3 But statistics don't tell the
hard,
with almost one-third of the cases and 25% of the deaths in
whole story about Philadelphia's enormous heart and commitment.
Pennsylvania
as of the end of May.4 African Americans have borne
The city is home to an outstanding network of community-based
organizations, with strong cultural and faith-based roots; strong a disproportionate burden of the disease. Our public health and
public health organizations; five academic health systems and a healthcare professionals have done an outstanding job of managing
health information exchange to help them share important data; and mitigating community spread, but the pandemic has exposed
and a coalition of local employers who are focused on improving the growing crisis in health disparities and access to care.
the health of their employees through disease prevention and health
The need for social distancing has caused many of our area's
promotion activities.
DPP lifestyle change programs to suspend their in-person classes.
Several of the providers, in an effort to maintain the continuity of
continued on next page
Summer 2020 : Philadelphia Medicine 29
https://philamedsoc.org/
Philadelphia Medicine Summer 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Philadelphia Medicine Summer 2020
