National Diabetes Strategy

This submission responds to the Department of Health’s April 2015 consultation paper, A Strategic Framework for Action, prepared by the National Diabetes Strategy Advisory Group to inform the Australian National Diabetes Strategy. Answering selected consultation questions under the paper’s five goals, Research Australia maintains that much is known about reducing type 2 diabetes but not which programs work in practice, and recommends promising interventions to be trialled at scale with a national protocol for assessing clinical and cost effectiveness. Drawing on the Evaluation Report of the Diabetes Care Project and a Baker IDI study of blood glucose levels in 467,955 primary care patients, it supports implementation research, guideline and GP software improvements, health apps and remote monitoring, and health services research into incentive and payment models, with every new program to carry an evaluation plan. It backs a nationally coordinated diabetes research agenda that first maps current funding, and strongly supports data linkage, including socioeconomic data and data from glucose monitors and clinical software, endorsing the Productivity Commission’s call for privacy reform and shared data management capability. It recommends embedding research in the health system through clinician researcher roles, career paths between research and care, clinical trial infrastructure and funding for primary care research, avoiding siloed research given diabetes complications and multimorbidity, and funding the innovation step needed to turn research into practice.