Reducing Diabetes Disparities Through the Implementation of a Community Health Worker-Led Diabetes Self-Management Education Program

Disparities in prevalence of type 2 diabetes and complications in underserved populations have been linked to poor quality of care including lack of access to diabetes management programs. Interventions utilizing community health workers (CHWs) to assist with diabetes management have demonstrated improvements in patient outcomes. Use of CHWs may be an effective model for providing care coordination and reducing disparities, but there is limited knowledge on how to implement this model on a large scale. This article describes how an integrated health care system implemented a CHW-led diabetes self-management education program targeting Hispanic patients and reports lessons learned from the first 18 months of operation.