Research

Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is an archetypal chronic disease and accounts for 4.6% of all years of life lost to disability and over $600M p.a. in direct health care costs, with an enormous social impact. There is now good evidence that intensive treatment interventions for patients with T2D are able to achieve significant reductions in biological risk factors that translate into important mortality and morbidity reductions, with social and economic savings.

In Australia, people with T2D receive 80% of their care in General Practice where GPs face barriers to providing intensive structured multidisciplinary care for chronic illnesses like diabetes. Australian studies thus demonstrate a significant treatment and outcomes gap between diabetes care guidelines and actual clinical practice.

One way to close this treatment gap is to use enhanced patient self-management to drive a more interventionist approach within the GP-patient relationship. Intensive multifactorial treatment in GP has not been studied in this way. Our proposed COACH program is a pragmatic intervention that primes the individual, not only to self-manage, but to take the initiative in their relationship with their GP, leading to more intensive therapy to achieve treatment goals.