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Diabetes Prevention Program Saves People Money, Study Shows
- January 8, 2025
- Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
Preventing diabetes can be as good for a person’s wallet as it is for their health, a new study says.
People participating in a diabetes prevention program saved more than $5,000 in direct medical costs over two years, researchers reported recently in the journal Diabetes Care.
These prediabetic folks saved money by not needing to pay for as many hospitalizations, doctor’s visits, or trips to an emergency room as others who didn’t enter the program, researchers said.
“In this real-world population with prediabetes, enrollment in the National Diabetes Prevention Program was likely to provide cost savings,” concluded the research team led by Shih-Chen Kuo, an associate research scientist with the University of Michigan’s Caswell Diabetes Institute.
About one in three U.S. adults have prediabetes, a condition where blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes, researchers said in background notes.
Prediabetes can be reversed through lifestyle changes like better diet and exercise, but 8 in 10 adults are unaware they even have the condition, researchers said.
To see whether preventing diabetes could help folks financially, researchers turned to the National Diabetes Prevention Program (NDPP).
The NDPP is a nationwide effort by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to promote lifestyle changes that can reverse prediabetes.
Beginning in 2015, the University of Michigan offered the NDPP at no out-of-pocket cost to university employees, dependents and retirees with prediabetes participating in the university’s health insurance plan.
“In the first six months, participants meet weekly to learn skills that help them improve their overall health. After that, they meet monthly to build on the skills they learned to maintain their positive changes,” Kuo said.
The research team evaluated the financial impact of the program using surveys filled out by nearly 6,000 people insured under the University of Michigan, including 575 who enrolled in the NDPP.
People in the program had an 88% increased likelihood that they’d save money by having fewer medical bills during the first two years, researchers found.
Participants also had a nearly 3% lower absolute risk of developing type 2 diabetes, results show.
However, researchers noted that participants need to be followed for longer than two years, to make sure the effects continue long-term.
“We also need to include more people in our study,” Kuo said. “Unfortunately, only 9.6% of the eligible population participated in the National DPP and, therefore, we couldn’t draw any conclusions on which mode of delivery worked the best, whether different patient populations showed similar results, and if the reduced medical costs were due to lower rates of hospitalization or shorter hospital stays.”
More information
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about the National Diabetes Prevention Program.
SOURCE: University of Michigan, news release, Jan. 3, 202
