Strategizing to defeat diabetes

Diabetes, and its rapid escalation in incidence rates, represents one of our country’s most daunting healthcare crises. Today, one in every 10 Americans has diabetes, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) projecting that ratio to increase to one in three by the year 2050. This disease is not only physically and emotionally devastating to those it impacts – with heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney disease, amputation and premature death among the potential long-term complications confronting them – but also extraordinarily expensive. Our healthcare system is currently paying a $200 billion annual tab for direct diabetes-related health expenses, with that number soaring skyward if the CDC projections are correct. 

However, we don’t have to, and we shouldn’t, accept those dire projections as our inevitable destiny. In fact, it is eminently possible to make major progress in the battle against diabetes, but it’s going to require aggressive, proactive steps to optimize the considerable assets we have at our disposal for this effort. We’ll discuss these issues at a congressional staff briefing at noon today, May 18 in 2226 Rayburn House Office Building. 

{mosads}Here are three immediate steps that policymakers at multiple levels should embrace in the drive to bend the diabetes curve: 

First, find the successful examples throughout the nation in which communities, workforces and patients have achieved healthier lifestyles and reduced obesity rates, distill the lessons learned and extrapolate them to larger populations. We’ve witnessed Oklahoma City lose a collective one million pounds of bodyweight. We’ve seen a successful initiative in Baltimore help expectant mothers stay healthier and pass that well-being on to their children. And, the Cities for Life program led by the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation with support from Sanofi US showed improved clinical measures for people living with or at risk for type 2 diabetes in Birmingham, Ala. These individual success stories can comprise and inspire a healthy direction for the country.     

Second, we need to turbo-charge the medical innovation that can help make a difference in the management of and fight against diabetes and other chronic illnesses. Currently, biopharmaceutical companies have more than 180 different medicines in various stages of development to treat either diabetes or diabetes-related conditions. Accelerating this progress and getting these therapies to physicians and patients will require visionary policymaking.  We need to ensure a regulatory, legal and reimbursement environment that encourages and rewards innovation in chronic disease states. 

And, finally, it cannot be stated strongly enough that we must engage the patient in this process.  The symptoms endured by people living with diabetes are exacerbated by non-adherence to medication protocols. For chronic diseases, non-adherence rates are around 50 percent. Sanofi and Healthcare Leadership Council believe a patient’s care must be well coordinated, particularly in diabetes, which is why we have also been working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to stress the critical need to coordinate care at every point during a patient’s journey.

For diabetes patients, with multi-dimensional treatment regimens, this is even more problematic. Successful patient engagement models in the private sector are currently helping patients become more proficient in their self-care and are leading to better health outcomes and lower costs to the healthcare system. We need policies that encourage the establishment of these robust, evidence-based patient-support programs in the public sector and throughout the healthcare system.     

Put simply, this is a war that America can’t afford to lose. Fortunately, the tools to conquer diabetes are either in hand or in development. Now we need the improved policies and practices to ensure that innovation results in a new, higher state of population health.

Grealy is president of the Healthcare Leadership Council.  Irace is senior vice president, Global Services for Sanofi,