National Diabetes Prevention Program gets $10 million in funding from HHS

WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services is providing $10 million in fiscal year 2012 funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Diabetes Prevention Program.

The NDPP is an initiative, authorized in 2010, which provides local communities with lifestyle change programs for preventing Type 2 diabetes. HHS' decision was praised by several groups, including the American Diabetes Association and the Diabetes Advocacy Alliance.

“Expansion of the National Diabetes Prevention Program will allow more Americans with prediabetes to participate in a proven program to lower their risk for Type 2 diabetes and its dangerous complications,” American Diabetes Association board chairman L. Hunter Limbaugh said. “By putting this program in our communities, we are also making good on our investment into the groundbreaking National Institutes of Health research that showed we can prevent diabetes and we are helping to reduce long term healthcare costs.”

"We are very pleased by the $10 million that HHS approved for this highly successful approach to reducing the risk of diabetes," said Martha Rinker, chief advocacy officer of the American Association of Diabetes Educators, a Diabetes Advocacy Alliance member co-chair organization. "The DAA has been advocating for funds to bring this program to scale nationally. The funding will help bring this evidence-based lifestyle intervention to more people and more communities throughout the U.S. to help fight the diabetes epidemic."

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