Canadian Diabetes Strategy Research Project - HealtheSteps™: Exercise and Healthy Eating Prescriptions to Reduce the Risk of Diabetes in Rural and Remote Communities: A Pilot Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial (Project 3).

The HealtheSteps™ (HeS) program was developed to improve the health of Canadians and reduce their risk for chronic disease (CD) and brings together emerging evidence from the areas of physical activity, nutrition, behaviour change, health technologies, and knowledge transfer, and moves knowledge into practice. HeS is an evidence-based, viable, and scalable healthy lifestyle solution to tackle the epidemic of CD in Canada. HeS goes beyond traditional health promotion messaging to give individuals a specific plan of action to improve their health and provides community settings with hands-on training, and resources from study knowledge brokers (KBs) to facilitate program uptake and sustainability. The investigators suggest that a widely available HeS program has the potential to impact the lives of Canadians at-risk for and living with CD; shift practice patterns within Family Health Teams (FHTs), Community Health Centres (CHCs) and clinics; reduce health care costs associated with CD; and inform policy decisions about health resource allocation and human resource planning. A scaled-up HeS program will offer at-risk Canadians an opportunity to actively participate in an evidence-based, community-focused, affordable (no cost to participant), healthy lifestyle program supported by point-of-care coaching and innovative electronic Health (eHealth) technologies.

This study will use a two-arm, pilot pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. It will take place within 5 clinic settings in Southwestern Ontario. Following assessment of eligibility and baseline measurements, participants will be individually randomized (1:1; stratified by clinical setting) to either the intervention group (receiving the HeS program) or to the comparison group (usual care wait-list control). The comparison group will be offered to start the HeS program after a 6 month delay. All participants (both intervention and comparison groups) will receive publicly available healthy eating and physical activity materials at baseline. Measurements will be taken at baseline and 6 months in both groups; additional follow-up measurements will be taken in the intervention group only at 12 months and again at 18 months (from baseline). Groups will be compared at 6-months in order to examine effectiveness of the HeS program; further, follow-up to 12 and 18 months will be used to look at maintenance of any changes in the intervention group only.