Development of a Pasifika Women’s Diabetes Wellness Program : from an Australian Pacific Islander Cultural Perspective

Background Type 2 diabetes is a growing health burden on communities and individuals from Pacific Island backgrounds both globally and in Australia. Self-management has increasingly been recognised as an important component in the overall management of chronic conditions. However, self-management that requires day-to-day decisions to maintain a healthy lifestyle is often challenging for Australian Pacific Islander (API) women with type 2 diabetes, with many not accessing or using support programs, education and health care resources, critical in the self-management of type 2 diabetes. Currently, the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes have not been adequately addressed for Pacific Islander communities in Australia. Aims A Pasifika Women’s Diabetes Wellness Program (PWDWP) was developed in partnership with the Pasifika Women’s Alliance Inc. (PWA) and Australian Pacific Islander women with type 2 diabetes living in Queensland. Methods The PWDWP is a culturally tailored 12-week diabetes self-management education programme, led by a community health worker or a diabetes educator and is family-centred, with the aim to promote diabetes self-management. Based on the ‘Fonofale’ – a Pacific Heath model, it embeds family, culture and spiritually as guiding values in promoting the health and wellbeing of API women with type 2 diabetes. Results The PWDWP focusses on ‘Wellness’ and consists of five components (building blocks): ‘Becoming heathy’; ‘Healthy thinking & feeling’; ‘Healthy eating’; ‘Staying active’; and ‘Healthy living’, which provide learning and self-efficacy tools to help develop and maintain a heathy lifestyle while living with type 2 diabetes. It also provides an online interactive platform with user friendly diabetes self-management tools including e-learning journal, discussion or community chat and tailored cultural resources on diabetes, treatment and management, to encourage and promote wellness and overcome barriers or challenges to diabetes self-management. Discussion This presentation describes the development of the PWDWP and each component of the ‘wellness’, framed within the Pacific cultural context. It describes the community participatory action research and engagement processes using cultural methodological approaches with the API communities to develop a culturally tailored diabetes self-management program for API women with type 2 diabetes. It also discusses how effective partnerships can guide and enhance diabetes research and health outcomes of Pacific peoples through community protocols, cultures and traditional knowledge