Armed With ADA’s “Standards of Care”

The standards of care for diabetes are ever evolving. They evolve with new evidence, medications, and knowledge. To keep up with the changes, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) updates its Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes guidelines each year. After an extensive review by its Professional Practice Committee, the ADA publishes updated recommendations each January reflecting the current best approaches to the evaluation and management of patients with diabetes.

The 2019 Standards were recently published in Diabetes Care (1) and are available online at professional. diabetes.org/standards. To keep up with the rapid pace of research and therapy development, the Standards are also updated online as new evidence becomes available throughout the year.

As always, Clinical Diabetes in this issue (p. 11) provides a primary care–friendly abridged version of the Standards that contains the key elements of these recommendations to help us integrate best practices into diabetes care in the primary care setting. These recommendations are evidence-based and patient-centered and emphasize the importance of shared decision-making as well as lifestyle modification and diabetes self-management education and support.

We are in an exciting time in diabetes management, transitioning from a limited armamentarium to a wealth of newer agents that address a complicated multifaceted pathophysiology. We are moving beyond a solely glucocentric approach to diabetes treatment to one that addresses the complications and sequelae of diabetes with an emphasis on positively affecting cardiovascular and renal consequences to improve long-term outcomes.

The ADA’s Primary Care Advisory Group, which abridges the Standards each year, has also developed a series of 1-day conferences held in locations across the country to help disseminate the Standards and to address other diabetes-related topics of interest to primary care providers. Titled “Diabetes Is Primary,” these programs augment a 1-day pre-conference program held in conjunction with the ADA’s Scientific Sessions each June. More information can be found online at professional.diabetes.org/diabetes-primary.

Primary care providers stand on the front lines of diabetes management. It is only appropriate that we be armed with the insights and recommendations contained in the updated ADA Standards of Care.

• © 2019 by the American Diabetes Association.