SCUBY: SCale Up an integrated care package for diaBetes and hYpertension for vulnerable people in Cambodia, Slovenia and Belgium

Background

Many countries struggle to find the best way to treat hypertension and type 2 diabetes, therefore many patients receive suboptimal care, especially vulnerable groups in society. SCUBY is unique as it allows to learn from best practices: comparing and reciprocal learning will lead to roadmaps that will help policymakers in deploying best practices and improving standard care for these health conditions.

In the core of this four-year project is the scale-up of an integrated care package with five components:

1. identification of people with hypertension and/or type 2 diabetes and subsequent

2. treatment in primary care services,

3. health education

4. self-management support to patients and caregivers, and

5. collaboration between caregivers.

Special attention is given to vulnerable patients and their carers’ involvement. We aim for strong scale-up and increased diabetes and hypertension control in each country.

Aims

1. To analyse the organisational capacity to scale-up the integrated care package and to assess contextual barriers and facilitators and to develop and implement roadmaps for a national scale-up strategy in each country.

2. To evaluate the impact of scale-up on health outcomes and costs and to generate lessons for other countries.

Project plan

Five research groups will study three different types of countries: a low-middle income country with developing health system (Cambodia), a former socialist high-income country with a centralized health system (Slovenia) and a Western European federal country with decentralized primary care system (Belgium). We will engage with key decision-makers at all levels, to identify opportunities and barriers to implement best practices at larger scale, and to support implementation relevant to the context of each country. We will evaluate how these care packages impact outcomes and efficiency of the scale-up in each involved country. The lessons on scale-up will benefit policy-makers in other countries with similar contexts.

Publications and output

This project has a related case study Driving Change: Scaling up an integrated care package for diabetes and hypertension in Cambodia, Slovenia and Belgium.

Funding organisations

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