Diabetes mellitus is a widespread problem in the United States that requires high healthcare system costs. Consequently, prevention of diabetes is necessary not only to improve the health of the population but diminish the spending associated with treatment and management of its consequences. These factors determine that the change program will include such stakeholders as patients, providers, medicine, the state, and ancillary services.
Patients are stakeholders because they are interested in avoiding negative and often painful consequences for their health. Providers have different interests; for example, doctors and nurses aim to fulfill their responsibilities and improve patients’ health. Simultaneously, insurance companies are interested in decreasing the incidence of diabetes to reduce the costs of testing, treatment, and provision of medicines. The goal of medicine is constant development and improvement to provide people with cures or comfort; therefore, searching for new methods for preventing diabetes is one of its interests and objectives (Sholl & Rattan, 2020). Simultaneously, the state has an economic and political interest since diabetes prevention can cut the cost of the health care system and show the state’s care about its people. Finally, ancillary services are also stakeholders as people with diabetes are more likely to need social support, for example, due to complications such as limb disease or fragility of bones (Ho-Pham & Nguyen, 2019). Thus, many stakeholders with different objectives are interested in diabetes prevention.
Nevertheless, despite the interests, the implementation of the change program may have several obstacles. First, patients of different ages and social groups have different motivations, which will complicate choosing the optimal method of preventive programs. For example, Schillinger et al. (2018) note that young people are rarely interested in preventative measures since their health outcomes will appear in decades. Secondly, some aspects of preventing diabetes complications are studied insufficiently; therefore, a lack of knowledge can affect the beliefs of health professionals in the effectiveness of measures. In addition, external factors such as limited access of patients to healthcare services and nutrition can be a barrier to implementing preventive measures. The problem of resources may also arise for healthcare institutions since the timely examination of patients with diabetes requires various tests and equipment. However, most of these barriers can be overcome through the joint efforts of stakeholders.
References
Ho-Pham, L. T., & Nguyen, T. V. (2019). Association between trabecular bone score and type 2 diabetes: A quantitative update of the evidence.Osteoporosis International, 30(10), 2079–2085.
Schillinger, D., Tran, J., & Fine, S. (2018). Do low-income youth of color see “The Bigger Picture” when discussing type 2 diabetes: A qualitative evaluation of a public health literacy campaign?International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(5), 1-14.
Sholl, J., & Rattan, S.I.S. (2020). Explaining health across the sciences. Springer Nature