Enhancing Informal Caregiving to Support Diabetes Self-Management

Although in-home caregivers (ICGs) help improve diabetes mellitus (DM) outcomes, they may lack the resources needed to do this optimally, and are at risk for psychosocial decline and caregiver burnout. Complicating matters, millions of chronically-ill older Americans live alone and receive long-distance caregiving without any supporting structure or resources to ensure its effectiveness. In this study, diabetes patients with poor glycemic will be recruited from two clinical sites, and half will have an ICG. Patients will nominate a "CarePartner" (CP; adult relatives or friends from outside their home) to receive weekly email reports about their DM health and behavioral needs, and will be given resources to help them to provide self-management support. Patients will then be randomized to receive either one year of CP intervention or usual medical care. In the CP intervention arm, patients will provide weekly updates on their DM health and self-management through weekly automated telemonitoring. Summaries of this will be emailed to their CP along with guidance on helping the patient address reported problem(s), and their clinicians will be alerted about medically-urgent problems. We will assess the following outcomes in both arms before intervention and also after 6 and 12 months of intervention: glycemic control, DM-related distress, DM self-management, health-related quality of life, systolic blood pressure, caregiver burden, relationship quality, and cost of DM care.