In February, a research team led by DAC investigator Melissa Northwood from McMaster University published a paper in the journal BMC Health Services. The article, Readiness for scale up following effectiveness-implementation trial: results of scalability assessment of the Community Partnership Program for diabetes self-management for older adults with multiple chronic conditions, involved DAC members and projects.

“The Community Partnership Program (CPP), an integrated care intervention for older adults with diabetes, was designed with scale up in mind – meaning from the beginning of the research project design, the team wanted to ensure if the program was found to be effective, the study would also assess the scalability of the program to determine the next steps for scale up of the program in Ontario and PEI,” say Northwood. “Failing to adequately consider equity issues and local community needs when assessing scalability could perpetuate or exacerbate health inequities if programs are scaled up without knowledge of their impact across diverse communities.”

In the team’s scalability assessment, health inequities were the focus of many discussions initiated by participants. They believe this was due to the emphasis on health equity and the social determinants of health in the design of the CPP, but also because of the inclusion of patient and public research partners in planning and implementing the scalability assessment process.

“Patient and public research partners played a large role in this project, right from the beginning, in having older adults and caregivers as partners,” says Northwood. “In this phase of the research, six Patient Partners participated in all phases of the project and in the preparation of the manuscript. In particular, they identified several adaptations to improve program acceptability and effectiveness for both older adults and their care partners. We are very grateful to DAC who supported us with connections to Patient Partners and championed this work.”

Northwood’s team is committed to sustaining the collaborative working relationships developed during the trial and will seek further funding opportunities to support the scale-up of the program into usual care of older adults with diabetes and multiple chronic conditions.

Read the article now!