Summary
Diabetes UK’s ‘Enjoy Food project. Helping families with diabetes shop, cook and eat healthily’ was created in 2014, after research indicated that many people with type 2 diabetes found managing their diet the most challenging aspect of the condition. The project in the first two years was funded as part of Diabetes UK’s National Charity Partnership with Tesco. After project targets were met in the first year and second year internal resources were put in place to allow this project to continue to run for a third year without external funding.
Innovation
To our knowledge this is the first time a complete package of free expert diabetes dietary information, including a monthly e-newsletter, a series of articles on the psychology of food, online nutritional videos and printed Enjoy Food magazine packs, has been available for people with diabetes and their families.
Since the project began the digital content of Enjoy Food has been monitored to give us an insight into which pieces of content are most popular and how users have been interacting with our content. This has enabled us to react swiftly and incorporate content meeting the needs of our audiences.
Results
Enjoy Food and recipe page views have increased since the start of this project. There are more return visits to these pages than our website as a whole, and return visitors to Enjoy Food spend more time on the site and view more pages. Quantitative results November 2014 to end 2016:
Number of page views = 10,168,512
Facebook reach = 7,505,906
Twitter reach = 4,464,692
Number of Enjoy Food packs distributed = 350,903
Number of people signed up to monthly Enjoy Food e-newsletter = 20,297
21,775 ‘Eat well postcards’ have been completed by individuals requesting an Enjoy Food pack.
An initial online survey of the subscribers to the Enjoy Food e-newsletter was undertaken between 30 November 2015 and 11 January 2016. 786 responses were received. 70% said they had type 2 diabetes, 9% said they have type 1 diabetes and nearly 20 % of people said they had a family member with diabetes. Enjoy Food is also being used by those at risk, with 10% saying they had been told they were at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. People could tick more than one category. Four-fifths (79%) of people agree they have a better understanding of food and what to eat with nearly three-quarters (73%) saying they feel more confident with their food choices. Three-quarters of people say it is now easier for them to plan meals, while two-thirds find it easier to shop for food and cook meals for their household. The Enjoy Food project, with all content peer-reviewed and free of charge, has the potential for significant cost benefits in terms of reducing the cost of treating complications and reducing the cost of pharmacological management.
Dissemination and Sustainability
Funding from Tesco has finished but we have managed to continue with this project using efficient use of internal resources and adapting content from other publications, where appropriate, so that it is aligned with the Enjoy Food demographic. The Enjoy Food website continues to be updated with new information, our Enjoy Food postcard scheme still operates and Enjoy Food guides can still be ordered free of charge or downloaded. These are regularly updated. Our Enjoy Food e-newsletter still goes out every month and organic social media posts are placed including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. There is a bimonthly update of carousels to keep the Enjoy Food website fresh and attract traffic. Our Enjoy Food guides, as one of our core Diabetes UK publications is definitely a sustainable resource for people with diabetes and resources have been directed to ensure the continued initiative of our ‘Eating well with diabetes’ postcard scheme to enable people to continue to request this free information.
Method
We produced online nutritional information, a monthly e-newsletter including the latest nutrition information, seasonal content, articles on the psychology of food and nutritional videos. Materials are tailored to suit key audiences, including people of lower socio-economic status and those from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups who are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Over 435 online recipes have been created, the nutritional content analysed and each one meeting the Department of Health’s criteria for low/medium sugar, fat and salt. Free printed Enjoy Food packs were available via Tesco stores in November 2014 and at our external events including our Living with Diabetes Days, our prevention roadshows and type 1 diabetes events. Our prevention team has signposted people to our Enjoy Food packs in the ‘new risk packs’ given to people in our ‘Know Your Risk Roadshows’ who were identified as being at risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the next 10 years. We set up an ‘Eating well with diabetes postcard scheme’ whereby healthcare professionals can order postcards which they can give to their patients for them to request, free of charge and postage free, from us an Enjoy Food pack containing the Enjoy Food guide and follow-up support and information from us about living well with diabetes.
