Expanding Diabetes Education to Community Health Centers

On our last day in Beijing, we visited the Daxing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, one of the 18 diabetes training centers developed by Project HOPE, with the support of the Ministry of Health, to expand and improve diabetes education and care in China.

The community hospital combines traditional Chinese medicine and Western treatments, with an emphasis on patient education, to battle the increasing incidence of diabetes among the Chinese.

HOPE’s diabetes program has been in place at the Daxing Hospital since 2009.

The Hospital’s Director of Endocrinology and Coordinator for HOPE’s Diabetes Education and Care Program, Dr. Ma Li, is an early graduate of HOPE’s Diabetes Education Program, graduating from our third training program in 2001 from Peking University People’s Hospital.  He told our delegation that he uses the knowledge he gained during his diabetes education training on a daily basis in his current work, especially when communicating with patients.

Currently, Daxing Hospital hosts diabetes education for primary care medical professionals every week, and provides patient education courses every month, sharing important information about diabetes care and prevention to more and more people.  Using HOPE’s own longtime tagline, Dr. Ma said, “We help them (the patients) help themselves.”

While there is still much to accomplish, it is satisfying to know that  HOPE’s diabetes education programs in China have trained 44,094 physicians, nurses and health care workers from 3,019 hospitals and community health centers and have reached 223, 728 patients and their family members.

John