Authors' objectives:

Estimating a population’s baseline risk of disease is a cornerstone of modern health planning. This report estimates Canadians’ future risk of developing diabetes based, for the first time, on current levels of obesity and other diabetes risk factors in the population.

Authors' recommendations: Between 2007 and 2017, 1.9 million Canadians are predicted to develop diabetes. This means that about nine out of every 100 Canadians are predicted to be newly diagnosed with diabetes during the 10-year period.• In 2007, the 10-year risk of diabetes was lowest in Québec, British Columbia and Canada's urban regions. Individuals who are obese have the highest individual diabetes risk, but Canadians who are overweight bear the greatest population risk.• In total, 712,000 cases are predicted to develop in people who are overweight, defined as a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25–30, compared to 247,000 cases for people who are very obese (BMI>35).• Two case studies are presented which illustrate how the DPoRT can be used for health planning:-- The first case study examines the number of cases of diabetes that could be prevented in Ontario using either: a population strategy that uniformly reduces the entire population’s weight by a small amount; or, a high-risk strategy that targets individuals with preventive therapy—either pharmacotherapy (such as metformin) or lifestyle counselling. We show that, because population risk is moderately diffused throughout the population, both strategies should be further assessed for preventing diabetes in Ontario.-- The second case study demonstrates analyses to support local diabetes planning, by estimating the diabetes risk for the Ottawa region, and identifying people who bear the greatest population risk. • Health planners can use population baseline risk of developing diabetes (estimated using multivariate risk tools) to predict how many people will newly develop diabetes, determine who to target for prevention, and estimate the potential benefit of different prevention strategies.• Population baseline risk can then be combined with other information to gauge the feasibility, resource implications and real-life preventive benefit of prevention strategies.

Project Status: Completed

URL for project: http://www.ices.on.ca/file/Diabetes%20Risks%20June%2016%202010.pdf

Year Published: 2010

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: Canada

Organisation Name: Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences

Contact Address: Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, 2075 Bayview Avenue, G-Wing, Toronto ON, Canada, M5N 3M5. Tel: 416-480-4055; Fax: 416-480-6048

Contact Name: info@ices.on.ca

Contact Email: info@ices.on.ca

Copyright: Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES)