For many people with diabetes, effective self-management requires a radical change in behaviour.
This sort of change can’t always be instigated or maintained by institutions like the NHS, where resources are tight and priority must be given to the delivery of medical treatments. Instead, the improvement of diabetes care has to be enabled and supported at an individual level, one person at a time.
The Design Council’s research with the Bolton group revealed that there needs to be a shift away from teaching patients what they should do, and instead find out from each individual what they can do, identifying what barriers there are to change, overcoming them and supporting that change into the long term.
Solutions such as the agenda cards and the personal trainers complement existing educational and medical resources by tackling the issue of chronic disease management from the perspective of the individual, providing a means by which those with diabetes can gain greater control of their disease and its effect on their lives.
