A PROJECT TO REDUCE THE BURDEN OF DIABETES IN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY - PROJECT DIRECT

Project DIRECT (Diabetes Interventions Reaching and Educating Communit ies Together) is the first comprehensive community diabetes demonstrat ion project in the United States in an African-American community. Thi s article describes its intervention components and evaluation design. The development and implementation of Project DIRECT has included the community since the project's beginning. Interventions are targeted i n three areas: health promotion (improving diet and physical activity levels), outreach (improving diabetes awareness, detection of undiagno sed diabetes, and ensuring that persons with diabetes who are not rece iving continuing diabetes care are integrated into the health-care sys tem), and diabetes care (improving self-care, increasing access, and i mproving the quality of diabetes preventive care received within the h ealth-care system). Evaluation will be internal (conducted by Project DIRECT staff to assess process outcomes in persons directly exposed to each specific intervention) and external (review of outcomes to asses s the impact of the multi-intervention program at the level of the ent ire community). Because diabetes exacts a disproportionate toll among African Americans, the findings from this project should aid in develo ping strategies to lessen the burden of this disorder, particularly am ong minority populations.