Improving the care of adults with diabetes and severe mental illness
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving the care of adults with type 2 diabetes and severe mental illness using experience-based co-design.
IRAS ID
280589
Contact name
Alan Simpson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 1 days
Research summary
Approximately half of the 73,000 people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and severe mental illness (SMI) in England and Wales do not receive essential healthcare that could help reduce preventable diabetes complications. Overlooked health needs may lead to complications such as stroke, lower-limb amputation, and blindness. People with SMI tend to have a reduced life expectancy by approximately 10 to 15 years compared to the general population. They are more likely to experience poverty and achieve lower educational levels which increases the difficulty in accessing services to prevent and improve illness.
Existing interventions that aim to improve diabetes self-management have had varying degrees of success. Most existing self-management programmes are not designed to meet the specific needs of people with SMI. The few interventions that have been developed to improve the self-management of both T2DM and SMI have led to limited improvements in diabetes related and mental health outcomes.
Understanding the experiences of service users and staff who receive and deliver care is key to improve them. The experience-based co-design (EBCD) approach brings together service users and staff in a series of events to share experiences, agree priorities and design service changes with the aim of improving a service and, ultimately, the experiences of care of both service users and staff. EBCD has been used extensively in a variety of healthcare contexts, including to redesign both diabetes and mental health services.
This study will use the EBCD approach to co-design an intervention to improve the care of adults with T2DM and SMI.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/LO/0453
Date of REC Opinion
24 Jun 2021
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion