Group Education for Obese Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: Greater Success at Less Cost

Abstract
It has been suggested that much effort expended in teaching diabetic diets is ineffective and wasteful. We have tested a different system by randomly allocating 75 newly diagnosed obese Type 2 diabetic patients to usual ‘unstructured’ clinic care or to group education by diabetes specialist nurses and a dietitian. Patients allocated to group education attended five 90-min group sessions during the first 6 months. Six months after diagnosis they had lost more weight (median (95 % CI), 7 (5.5–9) vs 2 (1–5) kg, p1: 7.5 (7.0–8.1) vs 9.5 (8.7–10.4) %, pp1:9.0 (8.2–9.8) vs 9.9 (8.9–10.9) %. At 1 year only 14 (39 %) of the education group and 9 (23 %) of those attending the clinic had a fasting blood glucose less than 7.0 mmol l−1.