The challenge

Diabetes is global and growing health challenge that deeply impacts people and families, as well as placing significant demand on healthcare services. In Aotearoa, there is significant inequality with diabetes related to outcomes for Māori and Pacific people. In the Auckland and Waitematā districts alone there are approximately 57,000 people living with diabetes.

To respond to this challenge, Auckland and Waitematā District Health Boards commissioned innovate change to lead a Co-Design process to create a new model of care* to better support people and families living with type 2 diabetes. In particular, those who are newly diagnosed, as well as those who may be struggling to manage well without experiencing complications.

*A model of care broadly defines the ways health services are delivered, and describes how care and service will be delivered to people. In this case, people and families living with diabetes. We create models of care to help ensure people get the care they need, in the ways they need it.

What did we do?

We followed the first three stages of our innovative action model , involving people living with diabetes, people and families supporting people living with diabetes, as well professionals working alongside people living with type 2 diabetes.

We began with a series of semi-structured interviews with people living with type 2 diabetes, personally, or as a supporter of someone who does. While a model of care should effectively meet the needs of many population groups, we focused on hearing from Māori, Pacific people and those from lower socio-economic areas due to these groups having relatively higher rates of diabetes, poorer access to health care, and poorer health outcomes. In addition to speaking to 'experts by experience' we also spoke to those with professional expertise in supporting people with diabetes.

These conversations identified 11 key insights, which we provided to a Co-Design group as essential pre-reading to enable them to understand the challenges and opportunities in regards to the experiences of people and families living with type 2 diabetes in Auckland and Waitematā.

The Co-Design group was made up of people with lived experience of diabetes (personally, as well as those who support someone living with diabetes), external provocatNZDs, as well as health professionals. Over the course of two sessions, the group used the key insights, as well as their own knowledge and wisdom, to collaboratively design a new model of care that describes how things should be organized in order to support people and families to manage their diabetes as well as possible. Along with a model of care, the group identified underpinning principles for the model, as well as an ideal user experience for people and families through the new model of care.

Now that a new model of care has been developed we'd like to see the components of the model being prototyped and tested prior to piloting to ensure the model brings about better outcomes for people and families. For example, prototyping systems, materials, interactions and approaches.

We created

Insights on people and families living with diabetes.

A new model of care to support people and families living with diabetes.

Our impact

Through a revised model of care we'll be helping Auckland and Waitematā District Health Boards to achieve their goals of ensuring:

• people with diabetes have appropriate access to services that provide equity of across all population groups.
• services for people with diabetes are patient and whānau centred.
• services for for people with diabetes are configured to support the delivery of integrated services and to better align care and incentives across the primary and secondary sectors.