Evaluation of Video On-Demand Programming to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes in Adults

Over the past 40 years, diabetes has increased dramatically in parallel with rapid increases in obesity.About 90 to 95% of persons with diabetes have type 2 diabetes, which begins when the body becomes resistant to the hormone insulin. Insulin resistance results from weight gain and physical inactivity, making the vast majority of new cases of type 2 diabetes preventable with lifestyle changes. After the findings of the Diabetes Prevention Program were released in 2002, the high cost of the lifestyle program prevented it from becoming widely adopted throughout the U.S. The UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization (CHRM) will evaluate the use and effectiveness of a scalable approach for providing lifestyle-based diabetes prevention intervention through Comcast's XFINITY Video-On-Demand (VOD) programming, with additional non-compulsory support from SparkPeopleTM (Cincinnati, Ohio), an interactive tracking and problem solving web portal. By design, this effort will engage adult television viewers and offer them education and resources to support their efforts to achieve levels of weight loss and physical activity which have previously shown to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes. Specifically, we aim to evaluate: 1. Viewing patterns and characteristics of consumers accessing a prevention program via VOD 2. Effectiveness in terms of weight loss achieved 3. Consumers' ratings of overall content