As the Project Director of the soon to launch Healthy Families of South Texas community telehealth network, I’m proud to share important news about this new program which expands on our previous work funded in part by grants from the USDA. The project will launch with a community registry so everyone can participate; not just people with diabetes. Then in January we’ll launch the second tier which takes our profile based education to another level - a kind of diabetes version of Amazon’s expert profile based recommendations meets Facebook. The third tier involves working with pregnant mothers with diabetes of all types in the hopes of preventing serious complications. Here’s a quick overview for anyone interested in participating. Note that access to this program is being provided at no cost to the registered members and the 3 years of federal grant dollars means it will continue to enhance the lives of people in this part of Texas for many years to come.

What is the Healthy Families Program?

* HFSTX is an education and health monitoring community resource designed to establish a home based support network around people with diabetes and at risk for diabetes.

Program Goals:

* To improve self-care for patients and their families by increasing their knowledge of better lifestyle choices.

* To provide encouragement and reinforcement.

* To extend access to care into the home vs an unrealistic emphasis on office visits.

How does it work?

* Through Internet and cell phone technology and postcards, enroll patients and their families in the Healthy Families Registry.

* Over time, the Registry helps them to enhance individualized profiles making it possible for their team to receive personalized education and support via email, cell phone text messages and post cards in the mail according to their own preferences.

Check back in a week or two to find out the url for the online home for this program as this is still being decided.

Last 5 posts by Steve

• Halloween and Diabetes CAN mix! - October 5th, 2009
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• The Sleep Bolus - August 18th, 2009
• The Dirty Truth Behind DCCT - August 16th, 2009
• Day Fourteen - Sixteenth Camp Blog Entry - July 31st, 2009

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 11:11 am and is filed under Gestational Diabetes, Health2.0, New Products, type 1, type 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.