Hui Shao, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy in the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, received a five-year, $2.8 million Research Demonstration Cooperative Agreement (U18) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The project is titled, “Assessing Barriers and Facilitators for Participating Structured Lifestyle Intervention and its Real-world Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness Among U.S. Veterans.”
This project aims to identify barriers and facilitators to the enrollment and completion of the National Diabetes Prevention Program, or NDPP, and evaluate its long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. The research team will leverage both structured and unstructured data from the Veterans Administration to identify individual and system-level factors associated with the enrollment and completion of the MOVE! program. They will specifically focus on social determinants of health that may be associated with racial/ethnic inequity in program enrollment and completion. To assess the long-term cost-effectiveness of the program, the research team will use artificial intelligence to develop the first-of-its-kind large-scale agent-based microsimulation model to simulate individuals’ natural aging, disease progression and responses to the external exposomes, including the social, built and natural environment.
“Results generated from this study will fill critical knowledge gaps in implementing the NDPP in the U.S., thus helping to improve its future implementation,” said Shao. “Through this study, we will identify the most effective and cost-effective strategies to implement and expand the NDPP in the US.”
Co-investigators on the project from the UF College of Pharmacy include Serena Guo, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy, and Masoud Rouhizadeh, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.A., an assistant professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy.