Setting up a community type 2 diabetes service for children and young people

When children and young people develop type 2 diabetes, it is a serious condition that can shorten their lives. People diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before they are 30 live, on average, 14 years less than if they did not have the condition.

Type 2 diabetes is also becoming more common in young people. In 2022/23, 1,200 children were being cared for in diabetes clinics in England and Wales.

Not all social and ethnic groups are affected equally. Almost half of young people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before age 30 are from areas with the highest deprivation or are of South-Asian or African-Caribbean descent, and most are female.

In Bradford, most children diagnosed with type 2 diabetes continue to have the condition as adults.

Project aims

We want to find out whether group clinics held in the community are a more successful way of treating and managing children and young people’s type 2 diabetes.

In this project we aim to:

• Find out about the experiences of children and young people with type 2 diabetes, and their families.
• Together with patients, their families and medical staff, produce a proposal for a children and young people’s type 2 diabetes service in Bradford.
• Use the Connected Bradford database to find out what puts children and young people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and how many people are in this high-risk population

In the first part of the project, we will interview 10 patients from Bradford’s type 2 diabetes clinic, 10 family members, and 5 medical staff. We will ask them about their experiences of type 2 diabetes and of the existing clinic in Bradford.

In the second part of the project, we will hold group sessions with patients, their families and medical staff. In these sessions we will use the information from the interviews to collaboratively design a community children and young people’s type 2 diabetes service for Bradford.

In the third part of the project, we will look at data in the Connected Bradford database. First, we will look at information about patients who come into the paediatric type 2 diabetes service in Bradford, to work out what puts children and young people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Using this information, we will then look through the whole database to find out how many children and young people are at risk and what their characteristics are.

What we hope to achieve

The main outcome of this project will be a proposal for a children and young people’s type 2 diabetes community service. The proposal will then be implemented and evaluated in future work.

This is part of wider research to better understand type 2 diabetes in children and young people and find effective ways to prevent and treat it.