Associations call diabetes assessment effort a success - Chain Pharmacy - American Diabetes Association, National Association of Chain Drug Stores

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A diabetes awareness campaign, conducted last spring in a series of 250 risk-assessment events at chain drug stores in 10 cities, has been documented an initial success by its three organizing groups, who are meeting this month to evaluate fully the campaign and consider future joint outreach efforts.

The 2002 campaign, called "Take Time To Care About Diabetes," drew 5,000 consumers--an average of 20 people per day for each retail event location--for risk assessments at diabetes screenings hosted from May 28 to June 22 at community store members of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

The 250 retail events were hosted by 32 chain companies. The campaign was organized by the Office of Women's Health at the Food and Drug Administration, with the joint sponsorship of both the American Diabetes Association and NACDS. It was targeted at women in communities with populations at high risk for diabetes, including African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, in cities including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans and Philadelphia.

A strong supporter of the diabetes was Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, who had his blood sugar level tested in a kickoff media event in May at a Safeway supermarket pharmacy in Washington. Organizers, however, stressed that assessments for the public included blood pressure tests and pharmacist consultations for those already diagnosed with diabetes and pencil-and-paper risk assessment tests for those not yet diagnosed with the disease.

No actual blood-sugar tests were conducted in the pharmacies. Those patients desiring blood testing were referred to their physicians. About 5 million copies of a brochure, called "Take Time To Care About Diabetes," and ADA-prepared dietary recipe cards to promote healthy food preparation were distributed to consumers at 3,100 NACDS member stores.

A chief concern prompting the diabetes awareness campaign was that 9 million of the 17 million Americans with diabetes are women, of which an estimated 3 million women don't know they have it. In addition, according to Ann Daly, the immediate past president of health care and education at ADA who helped organize the campaign, only 30 percent of women who have diabetes have received any education about the disease. Daly, who is a certified diabetes educator and director of nutrition and education at the Springfield Diabetes Endocrine Center in Illinois, said women also were targeted for the diabetes outreach because the y respond more positively than men.

Women, according to Daly, corn p rise more than two-thirds of students in all diabetes education programs and men routinely claim to be too busy or refer educators to their spouse because she prepares most of his diet.

"It was important to use pharmacies as the sites to disseminate diabetes information," Daly said. "Most people make three or four times more frequent visits to a pharmacy than to any other place in the health care system. We also wanted to accentuate the awareness of pharmacies when handing out diabetes medications. A campaign like this makes everyone stop and think. Linking people diabetes education is critical to them."

NACDS support

NACDS spokesman Phil Schneider, who participated in organizing the event, gave a statistical profile of the 5,000 consumers who visited pharmacies for the diabetes assessments.

Shneider said 58 percent of the attendees were women, close to the 60 percent of Americans who have diabetes, but it was noteworthy that 42 percent of visitors were men, a surprise to the ADA's Daly.

Schneider said participating pharmacists were assisted at the events by employees of Impact Health, a Kin g of Prussia, Pa.-based company that assists with in-store medical promotions. The NACDS spokesman said one key outcome of the risk-assessment program was that approximately 50 visitors were told they should go seek medical assistance for a diabetic condition the same day they visited a drug store.

"Our members felt the program was effective because it raised awareness of health concerns," Schneider said. "It gave an opportunity for the stores to demonstrate their ability to help manage chronic illness, and the stores said it attracted additional customers for each day, although it is difficult to say whether those were existing or new store customers."

Two outcomes for the NACDS is the organization wants to discuss with the FDA and ADA the possibility of hosting another diabetes awareness campaign in October 2003, to coincide with the annual promotion of National Pharmacy Month. Additionally, the recent program gave impetus to the increasing trend among drug chains to have more member pharmacists become certified diabetes educators or CDEs, under a training program conducted by the American Pharmaceutical Association.

One educational benefit the events offered was a demonstration in many stores, according to Schneider, of how to use blood glucose meters. The ADA's Daly said every type of meter operates slightly differently and "many elderly patients like to be walked through the tests because a lot of them are intimidated. Yet it is important they be taught because doctors can't take care of a diabetes patient without the blood data."

Marsha Henderson, the health programs coordinator at the FDA's Women's Health Office, said her department, which created the "Time To Care About Diabetes" program, conducted advance focus groups for six months to ensure that educational brochures and dietary recipe cards for the events would be sensitive to the needs of the high-risk ethnic-Americans targeted.

"We met with Puerto Rican-Americans, CubanAmericans, Mexican-Americans and other cultures in our focus groups," Henderson said. "We needed to respect dialectical differences in our Spanish brochure translations."

Henderson said diabetes was the second topic of the "Take Time To Care' outreach series, in partnership with NACDS pharmacies. The first campaign was in 1999, and titled "Take Time To Care Use Medicine Wisely."

The FDA pro grams coordinator said plans are in progress for a third outreach program to be announced in January, but she declined to preview the topic. Diabetes was the first major illness targeted for the series and the focus on another high-risk illness for the next outreach is a possibility.

"In January we will announce a new partnership," Henderson said. "We will continue to work with the NACDS and the American Pharmaceutical Association. The NACDS are good partners, and they always make us an offer we can't refuse."

Speaking for the ADA, and the prospects for a future diabetes outreach program with the NACDS, current p resident for health care and education Martha Funnel, said, "We will evaluate this. We always want to repeat successful programs. We've done screenings before and the pharmacy is the traditional place to have it done. We have to look at how successful this was."

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