title: Evaluation of a Diabetes Education Call Center intervention.
abstract: Patients require education and information as they engage in self-help, self-care, and disease management activities. The purpose of this study was to determine how effective voice technologies are in diabetes patient education. A pretest-posttest study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of prerecorded educational messages delivered via the telephone to participants with diabetes. The intervention consisted of 24 four-minute messages on the topics of knowledge and prevention, glucose level, diet and activity, and management and coping. Eighteen persons with diabetes participated in the pretest-posttest trial. A total of 324 educational messages were listened to over a 12-week intervention period. The pretest-posttest trial demonstrated that a brief telephone-based diabetes education intervention can have a significant impact on increasing frequency of checking blood for glucose (p = 0.017), improving general diabetes knowledge (p = 0.048), and improving insulin-specific knowledge (p = 0.020). Automated educational interventions should be based on scientifically sound evidence and can be effectively delivered by telephone. Automated telephone-based diabetes education may be used alone or as a supplement to existing diabetes education. Automated education is a viable solution when healthcare organizations and regions that as a result of a lack of human and financial resources cannot afford a diabetes educator.
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA. borens@health.missouri.edu
authors.forename: Suzanne Austin
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Boren
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: De Leo
authors.forename: F Fungai
authors.initials: FF
authors.lastname: Chanetsa
authors.forename: Joe
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Donaldson
authors.forename: Santosh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Krishna
authors.forename: E Andrew
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Balas
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015190:Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring; D001835:Body Weight; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D013685:Telecommunications; D013689:Telephone