Diabetes Education Study Group

As always, I would like to, first of all, express my gratitude to all members of the Executive Committee (Dr. Alessandra Baldelli, Dr. Andrew Brooks, Dr. Conxa Castell, Ms. Sari Härmä-Rodriguez, Ms. Aline Lasserre-Moutet, Dr. Anna Majchrzak, Dr. Helen Mosnier-Pudar, Ms. Maria-Despina Varakla); to the DESG Secretariat and to all DESG members for their support and commitment with the Diabetes Education Study Group Project.

I would like to give special thanks to the former presidents, Prof. Jean-Philippe Assal, Prof. John Day and Prof. Aldo Maldonato, from whom I have been continuously receiving so much encouragement.

Obviously I couldn’t continue without showing my appreciation to Servier for their generous, continued and unconditional support of the DESG. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Jean-Philippe Seta, Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Laurence Alliot, Director of the Medical Affairs Department, Mr. Sylvain Gaudron, Director of International Scientific Communication and Mr David Coste, International Project Leader.

As previous years, the DESG’s activities were centred in 4 big areas: the Newsletter (sent regularly by email); the Teaching Letters (update of of 9 old Teaching Letters, production of one new Teaching Letter and the draft of another two); the Website with a continuous update and enrichment of its content; and the DESG GC Workshop which took place at the beginning of the year in Port de la Selva, Spain.

WORKSHOP OF THE GENERAL COMMITTEE MEMBERS

The 2008 Workshop of the General Committee Members took place from 16^th to 19th January, in a Spanish fishermen village called Port de la Selva and was organized by Dr Daniel Figuerola, former Vice-President of the DESG. Entitled “Overcoming transcultural barriers”, the 60 participants from 27 countries were able to exchange ways of identifying and overcoming language, cultural and religious barriers that may occur between the Health Care Professional and the Patient. The represented countries were: Azerbaijan Republic, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United Sates of America. All presentations and some of the photos of the event are available on the DESG website. 

THE DESG NEWSLETTER

Two issues were launched and one more will be published until the end of this year. The 5^th in January and the 6^th in June. The 7^th will be released hopefully in November.

The structure has shown to be efficient and therefore has been maintained: It begins with a note from the President about pertinent recent flash news in the area of diabetes, News from TPE initiatives (symposia, workshops, meetings, etc) and a summary of abstracts concerning TPE. The entire Newsletter is assembled by members of the DESG, from all over the European and Mediterranean countries, who shared their experiences in their homeland. Still there are many meetings being developed by/with DESG members, from which we don’t get any news making impossible their divulgation. Please send us news of your activities, your meetings and initiatives. We will be more than happy to publish them on the DESG Newsletter.

This Newsletter is sent, by e-mail, to all DESG Members (to about 600 e-mail contacts, from which we receive around 420 confirmation receipts). The update of the members’ contacts has been one of the main continuous tasks that require a considerable effort and unfortunately is far from being completed.

DESG WEBSITE

The new website is functioning, although still with some difficulties in accessing to some material, due to contents’ transference problems. Despite all these inconveniences, the website has proven to be a privileged tool of communication and of material diffusion, if we take into consideration the number of received information requests that came, for example, from Guatemala, Iran, Colombia, Malta, Cameroon, USA… Most of them include questions about how to access the DESG Materials, how to cooperate directly with the DESG, how to be a member and so on.

The material included on the website has been translated and made available accordingly. Thanks to a great help from Servier and their subsidiaries, we have manage to offer to our visitors a vast number of educational material translated into several languages, besides English, such as Chinese, Greek, Egyptian, Russian to name a few. We are working now on the organization of the material itself on the website.

Apart from this educational material, we have free for download important documents like Prof. Jean-Philippe Assal’s film “Gondolas and Gondoliers” and the WHO Working Group Report called “Citizen’s Guide to Chronic Disease Care”, which production was sponsored by the DESG.  

The statistics show that we had more than 110 000 visits over this last year.

Just for curiosity, in average, each visitor explored 3 pages and clicked 7 times.

NEW TEACHING LETTERS

During 2007, the DESG has launched the Teaching Letter N.º 37 – “The use of Oral Hypoglycaemic Agents”, which Editorial board was led by Dr. Andrew Brooks

Another three Teaching Letters are already being drafted and will be published as soon as they are ready:

N.º 38 – “Diabetes and Depression”

N.º 38 – “Diabetes and Catastrophes”

N.º 40 – “Diabetes Education in acute care centre”

We hope to release the Teaching Letter n. º 38 until the end of this year

All the Teaching Letters, as well as all the other DESG Materials are available and free to download from the DESG Website – www.desg.org – in Acrobat format. Much of this material is now also translated into other languages, apart from English and is becoming available for download on the website.  All the new material produced by the DESG is sent via e-mail to all DESG Members.

Please send us all the material you have translated and adapted for your daily clinical practice to be published on the DESG Website. Surely it will be helpful for other visitors interested in Therapeutic Patient Education in Diabetes.

At the Winchester GC Workshop in Winchester in 2007, a project was launched to update 9 old Teaching Letters, involving 45 members of the DESG. These updated Teaching Letters will be published in the Practical Diabetes International hopefully by the end of 2008. They are now at the final English revision, done by our Vice-President, Andrew Brooks.

REGARDING THE EASD

I.                    DESG Symposium

On the 10^th September, from 9:00h to 10:30h,  there will be a DESG TPE Symposium entitled “Tools to Achieve Goals - Therapeutic Patient Education”. It will focus on “Education Programmes – what can we learn?”; “Education for Intensive Insulin Treatment: where are we now?”; “The Portuguese Diabetes Association experience: Patient Associations – Are they part of the team?” and “Rethink Organization to iMprove Education and Outcomes – the ROMEO study”.

II.                  The DESG booth on the 44^th EASD Meeting

The DESG has now established itself as a regular participant in the Association’s Hall of the EASD Meetings. As in previous year, the DESG has its own booth, where educational material is distributed and contacts are made with people asking for information and showing interest in collaborating with the DESG. Please help us to give life to our booth.

NEW MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Dr. Andrew Brooks’ terms will expire this year Mr Godfrey Xuereb will be proposed for his place, as Vice-President of the DESG.

Ms. Despina Varakla’s mandate has been extended for one more year to help the integration of the future Honorary Secretary (Dr Anna Majchrazk) in her new post.

The Executive Committee will be then restructured as follows:

Dr. Jose-Manuel Boavida (President)

Mr. Godfrey Xuereb (Vice-President)

Dr. Alessandra Baldelli (Honorary Treasurer)

Ms. Aline Lasserre-Moutet (Director of Educational Strategies)

Ms. Maria-Despina Varakla (Honorary Secretary)

Ms. Sari Härmä-Rodriguez (Vowel)

Dr. Conxa Castell (Vowel)

Dr. Anna Majchrazk (Vowel)

UPDATED LIST OF MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL COMMITTEE

Currently the General Committee has 60 members (from 34 countries). Nine members will end their mandate this year and two members will have their mandates extended preventing the leaving of the two representatives on the same year: Pirjo Ilanne-Parikka (Finland) and Goran Petrovski (Macedonia). Miriam Van Agtmaal (Belgium) will also have her mandate extended since she is candidate to organize the 2010 GC Workshop. Four new mandates will be approved in this year’s GC meeting. There are still 12 European countries without any representative, to which the board will continue the effort to find interested people to represent them.

GRANTS AND AWARDS

The DESG sponsored the participation of some members at Therapeutic Patient Education Meetings held during this year.  

I.                    Fondation Recherche et Formation pour l’Education des Patients

Once more Prof. Jean-Philippe Assal and his team organized a Workshop which took place from 1 to 5 March in Zinal, Switzerland and was entitled “Lorsque la crise perdure – le poids de la chronicité”. It focused on the carers’ relationship with the disease and on the volunteers’ relationship with the victims.

II.                  Associação Protectora dos Diabéticos de Portugal

Sesimbra was once again the venue of the Portuguese Educational Seminar. The theme this year was “O bem, o mal e…” (The good, the bad and…) and proposed a discussion about the characteristics and evaluations we do in our daily practice as Health Care Professionals.  Sixty four physicians, nurses, dieticians and psychologists talked about, for example, the work conditions of the HCP’s and the perspective of the patient. It was held from 29^th May to 1^st June 2008.

III.                Fundación Rossend Carrasco I Formiguera

“Convencer o seducir a los pacientes?” – to convince or seduce our patients was the question posed by Prof  Daniel Figuerola on this year’s congress organized by the Rossend Carrasco I Formiguera Foundation in July.

IV.               1º Seminário Galaico-Português

The First Galician-Portuguese Seminar took place in Sanxenxo, Galicia and had the participation of 50 Portuguese and Spanish Health Care Professionals. The central topic was “The Consultation” and its phases. All the participants talked in their mother language, which aroused some interesting cultural issues and discussions.

DESG AWARDS

To encourage research in the field of Therapeutic Patient Education, the DESG attributes two awards of EUR 600,00 each, to the best abstracts from those selected for the 43^rd EASD Annual Meeting and one award of EUR 600,00 to the best abstract accepted at the 12^th FEND Annual Conference. The evaluation of these abstracts was carried out by a DESG committee.

This year the winning abstracts were:

- Courses for people with type 1 diabetes and severe hypoglycemia, presented at the FEND Meeting

- Quality of life, coping ability and metabolic control in patients with type 1 diabetes followed by group care with a carbohydrate counting programme, presented at the EASD Meeting

And in ex-aequo

-          Factors that can influence adherence to na Education Program for preventive Diabetic Foot Self-care

-  European implications of the READ (Ramadan focused Education and Awareness in Diabetes) programme

As in previous years, the chosen papers will be published on the DESG Website.

SPONSORSHIP OF THE DESG

The generous support of Servier has been confirmed for the next year and continues to be of the utmost importance to our Study Group. However, they will suspend their sponsorship in 2009 due to internal reasons.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute has shown interest in supporting the DESG and our activities.  Starting with a current partial support, they will replace Servier as the main sponsor from 2009 on.

FUTURE ACTIVITIES

• The 2009 GC Workshop will take place in Sesimbra, Portugal from 14^th to 17^th January.

• We will maintain the publication the Newsletter.

• New Teaching Letters will be released.

• We will update the list of the DESG members, sending by post to each one a small questionnaire asking to revise their data and contacts and to confirm their interest in maintaining a DESG membership

• We will continue with the DESG grants and awards to promote research and training in Therapeutic Patient Education.

• The implementation of TPE Symposia will continue to be one of the most important objectives of the DESG.