Importance of Follow-Up

Healthcare providers typically discuss the importance of self-care with people after they receive a diabetes diagnosis. Self-care topics include blood glucose monitoring, medication adherence, regular physical activity, healthy eating, and weight management.¹⁴

To increase engagement with self-care suggestions, it is essential that providers actively follow up with people with diabetes and reinforce self-care advice. Similarly, to increase enrollment and attendance rates for DSMES services, both the referring provider and the DSMES service may incorporate follow-up reminders into their routine processes.

Providers and educators are vital in linking their patients to diabetes self-management support resources (DSMS) to help them sustain behaviors needed to self-manage their diabetes. The ADA DSMS Toolkit [PDF-1.1MB] and DSMS Plan [PDF-237KB] can be used to personalize and identify local resources on emotional health, nutrition, physical activity, smoking cessation, support groups, and more as part of ongoing diabetes support.