The Prevent Diabetes - Live Life Well program is approaching its final stage. The Program is due to finish at the end of June and the staff have a busy couple of months left tying up all the loose ends.

The biggest job left to do is finishing up all the 12 month reviews with each participant. As well as seeing one of us at 12 months, we also ask each participant to see their GP.  This consult with the GP serves two main purposes:

1. To provide an opportunity for discussion around how the patient is going with making some changes in their life and for the GP to provide appropriate support and advice.
2. For the GP to re-measure some of the baseline measurements. These measurements include: weight
   • waist circumference
   • blood pressure
   • lipid profile, fasting glucose (and possibly OGTT to exclude diabetes).

It is crucial for the evaluation for us to get these measurements back to us for as many participants as possible. Since this is an evaluation of a diabetes prevention program, one of the main outcomes we must measure is whether or not people developed diabetes since being referred or not.

Unfortunately, a fasting glucose of 5.5mmol/L does not allow us to exclude diabetes. The research protocol requires us to obtain an OGTT or HbA1c to exclude diabetes in these cases. At this stage, we have a number of participants who have completed the Program but who have fasting glucose results which cannot yet be classified as being free of diabetes according to the research protocol.

For this reason, the Sydney University research team have agreed to pay for HbA1c’s for those participants with a fasting glucose level that does not currently exclude or indicate diabetes. The team at CSGPN will manage the HbA1c forms and ask those relevant participants to have a further blood test.  Any results will be forwarded on to the GP (if we see the patient before they have had their blood tests, we may ask them to have a HbA1c with the first lot of bloods). If a patient comes to you and shows you a pathology request form from us for a HbA1c test, you do not need to sign it – it will be privately billed to CSGPN.