Trained Volunteers With Type 2 Diabetes Experience Significant Health Benefits When Providing Peer Support

Abstract

Trained lay volunteers may have value in supporting lifestyle change programs in the prevention of type 2 diabetes, but the potential health benefits (or harms) experienced by these lay volunteers have not been well described. This is important, as this is an appealing model in terms of workforce planning. The aim of the prespecified quantitative study reported here, was to examine the possible health benefits or harms experienced by these trained lay volunteers with type 2 diabetes. In a large type 2 diabetes prevention program, we recruited and trained 104 lay volunteers with type 2 diabetes themselves, to act as diabetes prevention mentors and codeliver the lifestyle intervention. Mentors made motivational telephone calls to 461 participants randomized to one of the trial arms to encourage lifestyle changes. Weight, diet, physical activity, well-being, quality of life, diabetes-specific self-efficacy, and glycaemic control were measured at baseline, 12 and 24 months. Average mentor age was 62.0 years, 57 (54.8%) were male, 92 (88.5%) were overweight or obese (BMI>30 kg/m2). At 12 months, mentor dietary behaviors (fat and fiber intake) improved significantly, sedentary time spent fell significantly, and diabetes specific self-efficacy scores significantly increased. These significant improvements, with no evidence of harms, suggest lay volunteers with type 2 diabetes codelivering a lifestyle intervention, may themselves experience health benefits from volunteering.

Segmenting Patients With Diabetes With the Navigator Service in Primary Care and a Description of the Self-Acting Patient Group: Cross-Sectional Study

“…Health-related well-being was measured with the WBQ-12, and the self-acting patients’ better general well-being score compared with those of the other groups may be clinically significant, as the differences in means between groups again exceeds the MID [ 33 ]. In our population, the self-acting patients’ general well-being was a little lower compared with that of patients in other cultures and populations with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes and those with a greater than 12-year history of the disease [ 55 - 57 ].…”

A qualitative exploration of the experiences of peer leaders in an intervention to improve diabetes medication adherence in African Americans

“…Peer support is shown to be beneficial for those who need to improve on their diabetes self-management, as well as for peer leaders who provide the support [ 13 , 21 ]. Despite the advantages to peer leaders beneficial role in assisting patients with cancer screening and treatment [ 22 , 23 ], diabetes control [ 20 ], and chronic cardiovascular disease [ 24 ] the literature on peer support interventions focus on the experiences of health care professionals and participants, with considerably less attention given to the peer leaders delivering the intervention [ 25 ].…”

Intervention fidelity assessment: A sub‐study of the Norfolk Diabetes Prevention Study (NDPS)

“…The sequence of measures and delivery of intervention sessions is summarized in Figure 1. The protocol, baseline papers, and results from the NDPS trial are published elsewhere (Garner et al, 2022;Pascale et al, 2017;Sampson et al, 2018Sampson et al, , 2021. The NDPS identified people with high-risk intermediate glycaemic categories (i.e.…”