Colombia is one of the largest and most advanced countries of South America. CMCD is supporting a variety of projects in and around Medellín, in collaboration with the University of Antioquia School of Public Health and Savia Salud – a large HMO serving more than 1.5 million socioeconomically vulnerable people in the region. In this project, we are implementing and evaluating the feasibility and impacts of the CarePartner program, a service that delivers brief, weekly automated telephone assessment and behavior change calls to adults with diabetes. The automated calls provide targeted education about diabetes and hypertension self management, and helps clinicians identify individuals who need additional follow-up to prevent an acute event.

So far, more than 500 patients with diabetes and their family caregivers have been enrolled and preliminary evaluation results suggest important improvements in patients’ health and self-management.  Current plans are to expand the initial project to include a cost-effectiveness evaluation, and to evaluate similar programs for patients with other priority conditions including depression, heart failure, tuberculosis, epilepsy, and HIV/AIDS.  More information about this program (in Spanish) can be found in this video and recent article.  Other information (in Spanish) about the CarePartner model developed by CMCD can be found here.

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