Partners from the JA-CHRODIS work on type 2 diabetes have produced a policy brief on National Diabetes Plans, together with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. At this stage, the document is in its consultation phase. If you are interested to provide feedback on the document as a whole or on specific aspects, we encourage you to send your contribution by the 15th December 2015 to Jelka Zaletel ([email protected]).
Key messages of the policy brief
- The rising burden of diabetes poses important public health challenges to health systems today; this challenge has been recognised at the global level, with diabetes featuring high on national and international agendas.
- Countries in Europe have made progress towards developing a systematic policy response to the diabetes burden but overall the investment in and implementation of comprehensive strategies for the prevention and treatment of diabetes has varied.
- Drawing on a mapping of national diabetes plans (NDPs) in Europe that was undertaken as part of the EU Joint Action on Chronic Diseases (JA-CHRODIS) this policy brief identified a range of factors that appear to facilitate the development, implementation and sustainability of national diabetes plans.
- Identified factors are: national (or regional) leadership, multiple stakeholder involvement, patient representation in plan development and implementation, providing adequate resourcing for implementation of the NDP, retaining flexibility in NDPs, striking a balance between centrally defined requirements and regional autonomy, and learning from experience through monitoring and evaluation as well as transnational learning can help inform NDP development and implementation.
- The key challenge for the future is ensuring that NDPs can be monitored and evaluated by building up capacity in information systems so that the health outcomes of such interventions can be adequately measured.
