Diabetes Prevention Efforts of VSP-ADA Partnership Exceed Expectations
Keeping the Focus on Diabetes Prevention and Management
Did you know there are roughly 96 million adults in the U.S. who are living with prediabetes?
Did you also know more than 80% of them don’t know they have it?1
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There are more than 37 million people living with diabetes in the U.S., and diabetes is the number one cause of blindness in working-age adults. Early detection, timely treatment, and appropriate follow-up care can reduce a person’s risk for severe vision loss from diabetes-related eye disease by 95%.
As a health-focused vision care company, VSP is a partner of the Focus on Diabetes® initiative from the American Diabetes Association® (ADA). This initiative aims to increase awareness about the importance of comprehensive, dilated eye exams and highlights the role of eye care professionals on the healthcare team.
Over the past three years, we have had incredible success reaching our initial goals.
Our work with the ADA included four core elements:
- A Focus on Awareness — We highlighted the importance of eye exams for individuals living with or at risk of diabetes. Our message generated 750 million web and social media impressions.
- A Focus on Prevention — We co-branded the ADA Diabetes Risk Test. Roughly 36K people took the risk test on vsp.com, and 51% of VSP members had an eye exam after taking it.
- A Focus on the Diabetes Care Team — We positioned eye care professionals as part of the healthcare eco-system and developed inter-professional communication protocols to improve collaboration between a patient’s healthcare team and their eye care provider.
- A Focus on VSP Network Doctors — We created the ADA badge program to deliver diabetes education to VSP doctors and staff and provided a way to highlight practices’ specialty for caring for people living with or at risk for diabetes on the VSP Doctor Directory on vsp.com. In three years, 1,800 staff courses were completed, 7,000 hours of continuing education were earned, and 3,200 practices earned the ADA badge—and gained new patients as a result.
Keeping the Focus on Diabetes Prevention and Management
While we're excited to share these accomplishments, our work is not done.
Our ongoing ADA partnership will continue to raise awareness about diabetes and the connection to eye health through the co-branded ADA Diabetes Risk Test on vsp.com and provide diabetes education to VSP doctors and staff through the ADA badge program.
Learn more about VSP, iCare Health Solutions, and how our work connecting vision care and diabetes can make a difference for your members and health plan HEDIS scores, on VSP’s Health and Government Markets website.