Endocrine Insider
April 3, 2008

Since 2000, The Endocrine Society has partnered with the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) on projects that improve the treatment and outcomes for people with diabetes. A program of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, NDEP is a federally sponsored initiative that not only assists in the improvement of diabetes treatment but develops awareness campaigns for health care professionals, patients, and classrooms. The Society has been an effective collaborator on these campaigns by participating on NDEP’s Steering Committee and its Health Care Professional Work Group.

The Society’s contributions through these groups include providing input on NDEP’s overall strategic plan, specifically contributing to its empowerment messages encouraging patients to make lifestyle changes, to its tools to improve outcome measures of diabetic patients, and to its business health strategies.

Through the efforts of former NDEP representative Robert Vigersky, MD, the Society has been particularly effective in its partnership on the development of the Better Diabetes Care website (http://betterdiabetescare.nih.gov/index.htm). The site was designed in 2001 to be a resource for health care professionals to help them address the steps outlined by the Institute of Medicine report Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century (http://www.iom.edu/?id=12736). The report focused on how the health care delivery system could be designed to innovate and improve care. Dr. Vigersky researched and provided content for the site that could be used to develop models and tools to help health care professionals assess needs and determine priorities for changes in health care delivery, plan strategies, implement actions, evaluate results of system change processes, and obtain continuing education credit. With help from its current NDEP representative, Dr. Julio Rosenstock, the Society is committed to keeping this site current and continuing to acknowledge the need for health care system changes at many levels and in many applications. The Society encourages its members to utilize the resources on the Better Diabetes Care website and provide feedback through user surveys.

To view NDEP activities and download clinical practice tools and patient education materials, go to: http://ndep.nih.gov/index.htm

The Society will continue its work with NDEP to improve and implement its strategic plan and to work toward decreasing mortality rates in diabetic patients.