This application supports the Chronic Disease Prevention – Collaborative Doctoral Programme (CDP-CDP) Award funded for 2020-2024. The CDP-CDP PhD projects explored how chronic disease prevention might be implemented or improved in Ireland. Diabetes prevention after gestational diabetes (GDM) was one PhD topic – AfterGDM saw a quality improvement project within general practices in CHO5 implemented. A key learning from this work was the need for resource development to build capacity for further rollout.
We want to achieve two things with this award:
1) Increase health professional awareness of a woman’s chronic disease risk after gestational diabetes through knowledge exchange workshops with health professionals, women with prior gestational diabetes and decisionmakers.
2) Improve the implementation and uptake of diabetes prevention for women with gestational diabetes through the development of digital learning resources, a policy brief, a common plain language leaflet for all women to receive on discharge from maternity services and decision support tools for general practice.
We will initially bring researchers, health professionals and women with prior gestational diabetes together to co-design bite-sized learning resources to raise awareness of this population’s chronic disease risk and the importance of diabetes prevention programmes in reducing this risk. The resources will use our PPI panel’s lived experience and have a video or multimedia format to increase engagement. This will enable active sharing of our AfterGDM findings to positively engage health professionals and women. A policy brief, common plain language leaflet for all women to receive on discharge from maternity services and shared decision-making tools for general practice will also be developed. With input from the previous co-design team and the addition of policymakers, the developed resources will be relevant, tailored and evidence-based. They will be designed with the aim of accelerating translation of knowledge into action through the knowledge exchange workshops.