Abstract
Diabetes is a leading cause of morbidity, mortality and cost of illness1,2. Health behaviours, particularly those related to nutrition and physical activity, play a key role in the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus3. Whereas behaviour change programmes (also known as lifestyle interventions or similar) have been found efficacious in controlled clinical trials4,5, there remains controversy about whether targeting health behaviours at the individual level is an effective preventive strategy for type 2 diabetes mellitus6 and doubt among clinicians that lifestyle advice and counselling provided in the routine health system can achieve improvements in health7,8,9. Here we show that being referred to the largest behaviour change programme for prediabetes globally (the English Diabetes Prevention Programme) is effective in improving key cardiovascular risk factors, including glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), excess body weight and serum lipid levels. We do so by using a regression discontinuity design10, which uses the eligibility threshold in HbA1c for referral to the behaviour change programme, in electronic health data from about one-fifth of all primary care practices in England. We confirm our main finding, the improvement of HbA1c, using two other quasi-experimental approaches: difference-in-differences analysis exploiting the phased roll-out of the programme and instrumental variable estimation exploiting regional variation in programme coverage. This analysis provides causal, rather than associational, evidence that lifestyle advice and counselling implemented at scale in a national health system can achieve important health improvements.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 138–144 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 624 |
| Early online date | 15 Nov 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Dec 2023 |
Bibliographical note
AcknowledgementsThis study is based on data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink obtained under license from the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The data are provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. The interpretation and conclusions contained in this study are those of the authors alone. This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship awarded to T.B. Data storage and computing resources used in this work were supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, German Research Foundation, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany and the German Research Foundation grant no. INST 35/1314-1 FUGG. P.G. was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (1DP2AI171011) and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator award. J.M.L. acknowledges support from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.
