Project Overview

Dr. Tang and her team at the University of British Columbia will use a virtual care platform to deliver peer-led mental health support to rural and remote communities in BC, through an intervention called REACHOUT, created with support from a previous JDRF grant.

Given the shortage of mental health professionals who are trained in T1D, adults living in rural and remote settings experience the greatest challenge accessing the services they need. This gap in health care is why BC has identified “mental health care” and “rural and remote health care services” as two of the five provincial health care priorities. Dr. Tang’s team will seek to address three challenges of BC’s diabetes care: the availability, affordability, and accessibility of mental health support for adults with T1D living in settings with limited resources.

Peer support has been demonstrated to be a low-cost and viable approach to long-term self-management support. In addition, interventions that use technology (e.g., digital health platforms) have been found to improve mental and emotional health. As such, models that draw on both peer support and digital health strategies may prove promising in reducing health care disparities.
REACHOUT is a Mobile App developed in collaboration with adults with T1D, clinical psychologists, biomedical engineers, behavioural scientists, and rural health experts. REACHOUT uses digital health technology to “drive” mental health support to people living with T1D in the greatest need. If successful, this innovative approach that seeks to reach the “hard-to-reach” can be adapted for kids, teens, adolescents, and young adults with T1D in BC and across Canada.

Principal Investigator

Tricia Tang , University of British Columbia

Team Members

Deanne Taylor, Interior Health Authority

Matthias Görges, University of British Columbia

Joel Singer, University of British Columbia

Jennifer Davis, University of British Columbia

Linda Li, University of British Columbia

Joanie Sims-Gould, University of British Columbia

William Polonsky, University of California San Diego

Danielle Hessler, University of California San Francisco

Gerri Klein, BC Diabetes

Caleb Pope

Allan Heel

Larry Fisher, University of California San Francisco

Partners and Donors

JDRF Canada