Title of project

Addressing Unmet Needs of People with Diabetes through Digital Social Prescribing

Abstract

People with type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus often experience a life characterised by diabetes distress and social stigma. Ongoing concerns of complications and reduced quality of life, adversely affect individual emotional, mental, and physical health, and managing diabetes becomes a barrier to many social and professional opportunities. The multitude of complex mental, psychosocial, and socioeconomic challenges influencing the health, self-care, and wellbeing of people with diabetes, create a variety of unmet needs that can be addressed through community support.

Social prescribing involves the referral of individuals to non-medical services, including local community resources and supports. Social prescribing is a locally distinctive, personalised, and tailored approach to provide holistic healthcare and support for people with complex long term care needs and can help to address the unmet needs of people with diabetes. Referral to physical activity or diet and nutrition groups, mental and emotional support, and opportunities for social engagement, can all help people with long term healthcare needs build a sense of control and autonomy. It can improve connection to people with similar challenges and to the community more broadly. Augmenting social prescribing with digital technologies will enable the delivery of social prescribing at scale.

Digital social prescribing, referral to non-medical services through an accessible digital platform and online database of services, is a scalable solution for providing holistic healthcare and improving utilisation of both in-person and online support. Matched to local community need, digital social prescribing can be adapted to diverse populations and improve the reach of interventions through personalisation and tailoring of levels of access and navigation support. A digital social prescribing solution can incorporate monitoring of use and adjust recommendations in line with changes of individual health and well-being, helping people with diabetes and those who support them, to access the right resource or support, at the right time and in the right place.

Through this Fellowship, I will adapt my work in similar projects for cardiovascular disease and our existing Child and Family eHub – a digital platform that already connects users to information about local child and family services – to codesign, optimise for context, and evaluate the implementation of a digital social prescribing platform connecting people with diabetes to non-medical services and supports in their community. Building on the existing strategic partnership and drawing on the complementary expertise and resources of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Australia, and the Steno Diabetes Centre, Denmark, my Fellowship program will address critical gaps in person-centred diabetes care. The impact of this work will improve the health and wellbeing of people with diabetes and other complex long-term conditions in Denmark and Australia.