An innovative idea, to respond to the needs of the life plan of people with diabetes. Fand-Italian Diabetic Association at the forefront of its implementation.
Presented at the forty-first National Assembly of the FAND-Italian Diabetic Association, which ended yesterday in Rimini, was the innovative project of a “Social-healthcare diabetes clinic network”, which aims to define, and apply in some Italian regions, a model that favors overcoming the still existing difficulties for a full social and health integration of the person at risk or with diabetes. «It is an innovative project, to respond to the needs of people with diabetes, which identifies ways to build a network around the patient, an essential element on which to base the whole system of integrated care, which takes into account some peculiarities of diabetes care . First of all, let’s hypothesize a pilot study that allows it to be monitored within a local context», explained Paola Pisanti, former President and Coordinator of the National Diabetes Plan Commission and Head of Social and Health Policies for the Obesity and Diabetes Parliamentary Intergroup, in illustrating it.
“An idea to which Fand has contributed and which sees us fully involved both in the planning phase and in its desirable implementation, in those regional realities to which it will be decided to propose it”, said Emilio Augusto Benini, President of Fand-Italian Diabetic Association.
The project deals with the theme according to the shared concept of community care, with an interdisciplinary and intersectoral network model that develops relationships between the Municipality, healthcare companies, families and caregivers, the scientific world, associations, public and private institutions. At the base it is necessary to ensure a strong collaboration with the Municipalities and the Associations of people with diabetes and their families, in order to facilitate the initiation and implementation of therapeutic and assistance-existential pathways, which take into account the life plan of the person and therefore not only of the clinical aspects, but also of the social ones. “Already with the 2016 “National Chronicity Plan” we have tried to overcome the existing fractures between health, education, work, urban planning, the environment, consolidating consensus on the principle that the challenge to diabetes – a paradigmatic example of chronic disease – is a ‘challenge of system’, which must go beyond the limits of the various institutions, overcome the boundaries between health and social services, promote the integration between different professionals, attribute an effective and effective centrality to the person and his project of care and life” , Pisanti said again.
The model offers a different network from the classic “hub and spoke”, with a center of excellence connected like the spokes of a wheel to peripheral centres; goes a little further: “a model that responds to the needs of people with diabetes can be identified in the ‘Clinical-social welfare network known as the archipelago'”, according to Pisanti’s definition.
In fact, not only its “nodes”, i.e. the constituent elements such as doctors and diabetes services, capable of ensuring the care of patients, are part of the network, but also the services that provide social benefits in the field of diagnostic-therapeutic procedure.
Furthermore, the activation of such a model does not necessarily depend on national or regional regulatory provisions, but, more frequently, on the planning action that local institutions – health and municipal – are able to carry out.
«It is essentially a question of strengthening the general and strategic objective of “health in all policies” on the one hand, and interventions to act on the social, economic, environmental and behavioral determinants of health, including at an overall level, on the other. : environment, working conditions, social support, school» concluded Paola Pisanti.