Improving health through prevention, management of diabetes, heart disease, stroke

Story written by: Aaron Hunt

Editor’s note: Hunt, an associate professor, directs the Master of Public Health program within the Department of Allied and Population Health, arriving at SDSU in September 2019.

In 2018, Sharrel Pinto was awarded a five-year grant through the South Dakota Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve prevention and management of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Pinto is the primary investigator.

The project aims to improve the care delivery infrastructure and increase access and utilization of pharmacist delivered services, such as medication therapy management, which have been shown to improve health outcomes and reduce costs among these patient populations.

To achieve this goal, the program has set up partnerships with organizations across the state to evaluate the economic, clinical and humanistic outcomes for patients with diabetes, stroke and/or heart disease.

Year one of this project involved a landscape analysis of the current disease management systems in the state, including identification of gaps and facilitators of care. Patients, practitioners and payers were asked standardized questions. In year two, the first year’s results were used to develop partnerships with organizations involved in health care delivery across the state. That allowed these three groups to start planning for optimizations in services provided and developing new services that include pharmacists to better fit the needs of patients.

Year three, which finished in May 2021, was focused on finalizing development and launching these services with active patient recruitment. Year four, which just started, will involve analyzing data from these programs with adjustments to service delivery as needed, and year five will finalize analyses to promote sustainability of these developed programs.

The project is currently in the recruitment phase, which is focused on identifying high-risk patients and enrolling them to receive pharmacy services over the next two years. The study will track their clinical progress, claims data and survey data to get a full picture of the impact on their health and quality of life.

Co-investigators Alex Middendorf and Deidra Van Gilder work with a variety of practitioners around the state to develop innovative care models. Aaron Hunt, co-investigator, has been collaborating with payers in the state with the goal of increasing reimbursement for pharmacist-delivered services, which are primarily only covered by Medicare in South Dakota.

The success of this program to date is due in large part to building strong collaborations across the college’s departments and with organizations throughout the state. The interprofessional nature has allowed the team to utilize strengths from different specialties and obtain feedback from key stakeholders.