The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 29.1 million Americans have diabetes and 1.7 million adults are newly diagnosed with diabetes mellitus each year. The direct medical costs of diabetes were estimated to be $176 billion in 2012. Interventions to prevent diabetes have the potential to save the health care system substantial medical costs by reducing the incidence of diabetes and its associated complications. The Diabetes Prevention Program Trial (DPPT) demonstrated that the incidence of diabetes could be reduced using intensive diet and lifestyle counseling for individuals at very high risk for diabetes. Since publication of the trial results, many commercial programs have been developed to implement a scalable version of the DPPT intervention using fewer resources.

The CTAF Panel voted unanimously that in-person programs with group coaching have a net health benefit that is superior to that of usual care. Panel members noted that weight loss is an appropriate indicator of program success, and that even a relatively short, two-year delay in the onset of diabetes is meaningful and important to patients. When voting on the care value, a measure which incorporates comparative clinical effectiveness, incremental costs per outcomes achieved, contextual considerations, and added benefits or disadvantages of the intervention, a majority of members voted for a high value.

Date of review: June 2016

For questions or additional information, please contact info@icer.org.

Intervention of interest: Diabetes prevention programs


Final Documents

Below you will find the final documents from the assessment review process:

Public CommentsDownload
Response to Public CommentsDownload
Final Evidence Report and Meeting SummaryDownload

ICER’s President Steve Pearson, MD, MSc stated:

“Type 2 diabetes is a major health concern for patients and our health care system. There are different approaches to designing and implementing programs to prevent diabetes, and we believe that the evidence review and policy recommendations in our Final Evidence Report will help guide health systems and other stakeholders in figuring out how to move forward based on the strongest evidence of effectiveness and overall value.”