Lifestyle Empowerment Approach for Diabetes Remission (LEADR) Program: Effectiveness, Feasibility, & Acceptability in a Self-Funded Employer Setting
Grantee: Family Health International
Year Funded: 2024
Amount: $101,000
Report Status: In Process
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Project Summary: This project will test effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of the Lifestyle Empowerment Approach for Diabetes Remission (LEADR) program, developed by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine through a prior Ardmore Institute of Health grant. LEADR focuses on treating diabetes through lifestyle medicine (LM), including intake of whole, high-fiber foods and is designed for delivery by clinicians through a scalable shared medical appointment (SMA) model.
The project aims are to 1) assess LEADR’s effectiveness for improving glucose control (primary outcome) and blood lipids, blood pressure, BMI, fasting insulin, dietary behavior, diabetes self-efficacy, and diabetes distress (secondary outcomes) in patients with diabetes and 2) assess feasibility and acceptability of LEADR for participants and providers. We will leverage learnings from this pilot study to further prepare LEADR for national scale.
This single-arm, pre-post study will test LEADR with employees at ECU Health in North Carolina. Our mixed-methods approach will include clinical measures and surveys with participants to assess effectiveness and interviews with program implementers and participants to assess feasibility/acceptability.
Expected impacts of this project include improved participant health outcomes through participation in an innovative SMA-based LM program and increased access to high-quality, LM-based diabetes treatment in other primary care settings in the future, informed by our findings.
