Diabetes Education Study Group

CHAIRMAN'S REPORT
Prof. Aldo Maldonato - August 2003

On the occasion of the 27th Meeting of the General Committee of the Diabetes Education Study Group of the EASD, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Servier, for its continued unconditional support to our Study Group. In particular, I wish to thank Dr Jean-Philippe Seta, Chief Executive Officer, and Dr Laurence Alliot, Director of the Medical Affairs Department. I also wish to thank Dr Didier Halimi, who has recently retired from Servier, for his invaluable role in promoting along the years a unique partnership between the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific world.

I am especially grateful to the four new members of the Executive Committee who were elected last year: Dr Ilana Harman-Boehm (the Honorary Treasurer), Dr Andrew Brooks (the Director of Educational Strategies), Dr Rudolf Chlup, and Ms Barbara Semlitsch. Together with the two senior members: Dr Alain Golay (the Vice President), and Mr Godfrey Xuereb (the Honorary Secretary), they have given an enthusiastic support and an invaluable help to the activity of the Study Group. My warmest thanks also to Ms Nina Bonagura Coscione, in the Rome secretariat.

Since the last General Committee meeting, Budapest, September 2002, a Workshop of the General Committee has been held, new Teaching Letters and new Patient Education Basics for Type 2 Diabetes have been published, and the DESG website has been updated.

WORKSHOP OF THE GENERAL COMMITTEE MEMBERS
A Workshop entitled “Therapeutic Patient Education, the Great Challenges. Search of effective strategies to help: overweight reduction, regular exercise, COH counting, and pump therapy” was held in Celano, Italy, from 2 to 7 November, 2002.

Participants were 45 members of the DESG General Committee members from 25 Countries: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.

During the meeting, main lectures were devoted to an update of our knowledge of weight and eating control, the role of exercise, techniques for COH counting, and intensive insulin treatment with pumps. Group works were then run to develop educational guidelines derived from new evidence, and seek the most effective ways to educate people with diabetes accordingly. Sessions of experiential learning were also run on each topic.

During a special lecture, Marco Peruffo, the first person with type 1 diabetes to reach the top of a 8000 mt mountain, mount Cho-Oyu, without oxygen bottles and without high altitude porters, told participants his life history.

After the workshop, a CD-rom was recorded with all the lectures, results of group works on Metaplan, samples of Role-playing sessions, and pictures of the experiential learning sessions, as well as of all participants. A copy was sent to all participants.

PUBLICATION AND UPDATE OF TEACHING LETTERS
Two Teaching Letters have been produced this year:
No.27 entitled ‘Physical activity and diabetes’ (new)
No.28 entitled ‘Emotional intelligence in diabetes care’ (new)
The next to be published are:
No.29 entitled ‘Assessing and Improving Quality in Diabetes Education’ (new)
No.30 entitled ‘Quality of Life, a Parameter in Diabetes Care’ (new)
No.31 entitled ‘Approaching the parents of a child with DM’ (update)

These Teaching Letters have been or will be produced with the help of the current sponsor, Servier, and all DESG members will receive copies.

They, as well as other DESG productions, are being made available for consultation and free download on the DESG Website, in Acrobat (.pdf) format.

PATIENT EDUCATION BASICS
This series of documents on different topics involving basic therapeutic education for people with type 2 diabetes is being continued. Their aim is to provide easy-to-use educational tools for the Health Care Providers wishing to educate the diabetic patient, but who are unable to find time for a thorough systematic approach.

The Patient Education Basics issues produced this year were the following:
No.17 ‘Drugs for type 2 Diabetes’
No.18 ‘When insulin treatment may be necessary’

The next Patient Education Basics to be published are:
No.19 ‘The prevention of diabetic kidney disease’
No.20 ‘The risk of transmitting diabetes to your children’

These documents are also being made available for consultation and free download on the DESG Website, in Acrobat (.pdf) format.

DESG WEBSITE
The DESG Website (http://www.desg.org), created by a DESG working group, and officially opened on September 1st, 1999, has completed its fourth year of activity.

This year the Website has gone through a complete revision which has made it even more intuitive and easier to explore than before.

Equally important, even if less visible from outside, all documents and links are now under ‘content management’ in order to decrease delays in publication and updating. Also the feedbacks and the reports of utilisation have been easier to manage from our secretariat.
As before, both the General Committee members' list and the complete list of members are in a restricted area of the site, accessible to members only. The majority of the site is still open and offers a source of information, publications, education tools, and a variety of material produced either by the DESG or by others in the field of therapeutic patient education. In particular, the DESG Teaching Letters, 5-minute survival kit, and Patient Education Basics are regularly published in the “materials” section and are made available in text or Acrobat (.pdf) format.

Two new levels of restricted access have been established: one for the members of the General Committee, and one for the Executive Committee. Restricted sections, including for example information about next meetings of either Committee, appear only after the introduction of the appropriate login and password.

From 1st July 2003, when the new website was put online, until 15 August, there have been 957 different visitors, with 1176 visits (about 1.22 visits/visitor), 6661 pages visited (about 5 pages/visit), and 24858 accesses (about 21 accesses/visit).

UPDATED LIST OF MEMBERS
The updated list consists of 798 members from 85 countries. This list is available in the members’ area of the DESG Website, as well as the list of the General Committee members.

Thanks to a pressing joint action of the Honorary Secretary and Rome Secretariat, the number of national representatives in the General Committee has increased this year from 53 to 65 and the represented countries from 29 to 35.

For privacy reasons, only the names and contact information of current Executive Committee members can be viewed by the general public.

PARTICIPATION IN PAHO-UDOP CONFERENCE
The 9th International PAHO-UDOP Conference, entitled “Living with Diabetes: Challenges in the Life Cycle”, was held on March 6-9, 2003 at Ocho Rios, Jamaica.
The DESG Honorary Treasurer, appointed by the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI), had an active role in the planning and organisation of this Conference. The DESG President participated in a Round Table devoted to ‘Living with Diabetes’ with a lecture entitled “Living with diabetes on Kilamanjaro”.

PARTICIPATION IN PROFESSIONAL TRAINING AND AWARDS
Participation in Grimentz Workshops
Grimentz Seminars represent a unique occasion for in-depth reflection on the specificity of long-term follow-up, and the interactive learning of specific educational skills. The DESG once again provided the funding for a few members’ participation in two workshops held in Zinal, Valais (CH) in the periods 14-19 June, and 21-26 June 2003. The workshops were organised by the Division of Therapeutic Education for Chronic Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, Geneva University Hospital, and chaired by Dr Alain Golay and Prof. Jean-Philippe Assal, respectively.

The first seminar was entitled «Reperer et favoriser le ‘declic au changement’ chez nos patients». The participants included about 60 doctors, nurses, psychologists, pedagogues, dieticians, etc. The DESG contributed the expenses of two participants.
The second seminar was entitled «Histoires de Vie. Entendre et utiliser les récits des patients pour mieux gérer les maladies chroniques». The participants included 120 health care providers. The DESG contributed the expenses of five participants. The DESG Chairman was invited as expert, and attended the whole seminar.

DESG awards
In order to encourage research in the field of therapeutic patient education, two 600.00 Euro awards have been assigned by the DESG to the best abstracts accepted to the 18th IDF Congress, and one 600.00 Euro award to best abstract accepted to the Paris FEND Conference. The choice has been made by two DESG commissions.

SPONSORSHIP OF THE DESG
The generous sponsorship of Servier has been confirmed for the next years and continues to be of utmost importance to this Study Group. In addition to the already mentioned Servier Board, I wish to thank particularly dr Bertrand Renaud, Dr Aurelien Caillaud and dr Nienke Feenstra, who have been an excellent interface between Servier and DESG in the last three years. To them and to the DESG the wish of a most fruitful cooperation in the coming years.

FUTURE ACTIVITIES
Workshop of General Committee Members
A 5 day workshop will take place in Celano (Italy) in December 2003, to which all national DESG representatives are invited.
The workshop will deal with some of the main challenges in the field of TPE: namely how to help people with type 2 diabetes adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle, and how to help people with type 1 diabetes accurately match insulin, and COH uptake. The use of patients’ emotional intelligence and of their life histories will be discussed.

Implementation of the DESG Curriculum
The Step 2 DESG-Servier Partnership Meeting, planned for March 2003 was cancelled. New such meetings, aiming at presenting worldwide the DESG Curriculum to HCPs who should be in the capacity to implement formal Curricula at the National level, will possibly be organised in the future.
In the meantime, based on the needs expressed by the HCPs, and the modular structure proposed by the DESG, both Local Step 2 Workshops and Step 3 Curriculum implementations have taken place or are being planned in several countries. The DESG contribution to these national activities, ranges from the planning phase, to the implementation, and to the evaluation phase.

The new improved DESG Website has the potential of becoming a very functional tool for patient education and communication for the health care providers involved in diabetes therapeutic education.

The promotion of research and training in therapeutic patient education will be continued, also by means of grants and awards.

New Teaching Letters and Patient Education Basics will be published and distributed.