Background: The population of Wollondilly Shire in South Western Sydney is 46,000, of whom ~2100 have known diabetes. This rural shire has 19 ‘villages’ with no secondary care-centres, few allied health providers, no local endocrinologist and a low GP:patient ratio (1:2750). The Wollondilly Diabetes Programme (WDP), including both diabetes integrated care and diabetes prevention activities, commenced in November 2016. We now report the effectiveness of strategies on awareness of the WDP and report on diabetes prevalence in one community.
Methods: Methods to raise awareness of the programme and invite participation are through General Practices (including general practitioners (GPs) and other staff), referral via case-conferencing, flyer distribution across commercial/community outlets, social media (including the Wollondilly Facebook-page), newspapers (including the mayor’s column), radio, promoting the WDP at ongoing (e.g. Men’s shed) and one-off (e.g. Women’s day) community events, and word-of-mouth. Door to door surveys were conducted in the largest village (Picton) March-May 2017. Adults attending the door were asked to complete a short survey, capturing household diabetes prevalence and awareness of the WDP.
Results: Surveys were completed at 200/1594 (12.5%) houses to date, for 669 residents (mean age 36±22 years, 335 (50.8%) female, 474 (70.9%) adults). Only adults had diabetes (32/474: 6.8%). Age specific prevalences (18-39, 40-59, 60-79, ≥80 years) were 1.2%, 5.0%, 15.1%, 31.3% respectively with no significant gender difference. In total, 30/200 (15%) ‘Door attenders’ were aware of the WDP. The top three sources for awareness were: through the GP (13.3%), social media (10%), and directly from the WDP team (10%). Of those with diabetes, 10/32 (31.3%) agreed to complete a further questionnaire on their health.
Conclusions: Only 15% of participants were aware of the WDP following an extensive awareness programme, suggesting novel approaches are required to increase awareness of community approaches to prevent and better manage diabetes.