National Plans

Mapping and overview of national policy documents related to diabetes across Europe. Development of National Diabetes Plan (NDP) guidelines including the essential elements of any diabetes plan, with enough room for adaptation to local implementation conditions in any kind of social, economic and cultural context.

Leadership: NIJZ, Slovenia

Report on Contents of National Diabetes Plans

This report compiles the responses to the questionnaire designed to bring out the country experiences on NDPs of EU and EFTA member states. The responses analyses the content of NDPs in relation to the following fields:

  1. From health promotion to clinical care
  2. Important aspects of NDPs
  3. Core standards of NDPs
Download the report

Policy Brief

Download the Policy Brief

JA-CHRODIS has produced a Policy Brief on National Diabetes Plans in collaboration with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. The policy brief was reviewed after an initial consultation phase (cover page currently not available).

Key messages

  1. The rising burden of diabetes poses important public health challenges to health systems today; this challenge has been recognised at the global level, with diabetes featuring high on national and international agendas.
  2. Countries in Europe have made progress towards developing a systematic policy response to the diabetes burden but overall the investment in and implementation of comprehensive strategies for the prevention and treatment of diabetes has varied.
  3. Drawing on a mapping of national diabetes plans (NDPs) in Europe that was undertaken as part of the EU Joint Action on Chronic Diseases (JA-CHRODIS) this policy brief identified a range of factors that appear to facilitate the development, implementation and sustainability of national diabetes plans.
  4. Identified factors are: national (or regional) leadership, multiple stakeholder involvement, patient representation in plan development and implementation, providing adequate resourcing for implementation of the NDP, retaining flexibility in NDPs, striking a balance between centrally defined requirements and regional autonomy, and learning from experience through monitoring and evaluation as well as transnational learning can help inform NDP development and implementation.
  5. The key challenge for the future is ensuring that NDPs can be monitored and evaluated by building up capacity in information systems so that the health outcomes of such interventions can be adequately measured.
Download the policy brief

Annali Paper

National Diabetes Plans: Can they support changes in healthcare systems to strengthen diabetes prevention and care?

National diabetes plans, if planned and co-ordinated nationally and if designed to be implemented at the national, regional and local level, can be a good exercise to test the system’s capacity to change and identify main obstacles in prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. The paper discusses how national diabetes plan development may hold a great potential not only to improve prevention and care for type 2 diabetes, but also for transforming healthcare delivery towards a comprehensive care provision and drive the change towards innovative models of care for people with chronic diseases.

This paper is part of a series of publications on diabetes, published in October 2015 in the Italian Annali. Click here to access the preface and the other articles.

Read the paper

Guide for National Diabetes Plans

The Guide aims to inspire those readers, who see that the situation in healthcare could be improved and who are willing to take a part in the change, for example policy makers, healthcare institutions, patients and their associations, healthcare professionals and their associations. It could also be used for example as a background material for leading workshops at critical moments when strengthening of the implementation or the sustainability of existing plans is needed, or when new plans are under development and the major challenge is seen in how a written plan should result in actual implementation.

Download the draft guide
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