Diabetes Education Program Flourishing in China

Leaving Shanghai, we traveled inland, to Chengdu, to experience the far reaching impact of Project HOPE’s health education and humanitarian assistance programs. Our first visit was to the Huaxi Hospital, a teaching hospital and the largest hospital in China with more than 4,000 beds. One of the original sites for our Diabetes Education program in China, the hospital now serves as a leader and resource center in diabetes education and care for other hospitals and medical facilities throughout the Sichuan Province.

HOPE began partnering with the Huaxi Hospital in 1998, along with the Ministry of Health in China and dedicated corporate partners, Eli Lilly & Company, BD and Roche. Lilly continues to support the HOPE program, which has helped provide diabetes education to more than 211,000 health care professionals and patients in China.

While at the hospital, our newly elected Chairman of the Board, Richard T. Clark, and I, met with hospital officials including Dr. Tian Haoming, Director of Endocrinology. Dr. Tian has been involved in the HOPE Diabetes Education Program since its development 13 years ago and now serves as HOPE’s Diabetes Program Director.

Dr. Tian, explained the impact of the program, which has grown to provide diabetes prevention, care, management training and patient education to seven provincial centers and 18 sub-centers throughout China.

The highlight of our visit was meeting with some doctors and nurses at the hospital trained through the HOPE program. All emphasized the importance of HOPE’s Training-of-Trainers philosophy, which educates health professionals on how to share their knowledge, expanding diabetes care and prevention far beyond the busy walls of Huaxi Hospital.

Despite the progress, hospital leaders told us that the number of patients requiring chronic disease care and education outnumber the available resources of doctors and nurses, a message to HOPE that  health professional training is still vital in the fight against non-communicable diseases in China.

Check back for more on our diabetes success when we visit Beijing later this week.

John