Delivering Diabetes Care to Ethnic Diversity (DEDICATED) research project was launched in March 2010 to 50 delegates who included GPs, nurses, practice managers, healthcare commissioners, allied healthcare professionals, patient representatives and academic staff from the NHS, academic institutions and Coventry community. The study used mixed-methods to directly engage with patients, multidisciplinary healthcare professionals and clinical commissioning group leaders in Coventry and Warwickshire in order to address the primary research question to: How could health care professionals (HCPs) work with ethnic minority groups in primary care to provide effective culturally-competent care services tailored to the needs of ethnic minority groups with diabetes? This question was underpinned and informed by the objectives to:

• Identify cultural barriers to ethnic minority people with diabetes in accessing effective diabetes care services;
• Examine the impact of culturally-competent diabetes care interventions in improving diabetes-related outcomes in ethnic minority groups;
• Investigate diabetes service provision for ethnic minority groups and commissioning of such services in a typical ethnically mixed medium-sized UK city;
• Design an effective culturally-competent diabetes care service that can be implemented in primary care for ethnic minority groups with diabetes;
• Make recommendations on delivery and commissioning of diabetes care services to meet the needs of ethnic minority groups locally and nationally.

Preliminary findings are already influencing local practice positively.

Research collaborators include:

• Professor Sudhesh Kumar, and Dr Paul O’Hare of WMS
• South Asian Health Foundation (SAHF)
• Diabetes UK
• Apnee Sehat CIC
• Local specialist team of MDT
• DEDICATED patient representatives of target EMGs
• WISDEM Research team
• Specialised librarians
• Warwick Diabetes Research & Education User Group
• UHCW Research, Development & Innovation team.

Supervisors:

Professor Jackie Sturt of King's College London,

Dr Harbinder Sandhu of Warwick Medical School,

Professor Ann-Marie Cannaby of Hamad Medical Corporation in Doha, Qatar.