Approximately 116 million people in China have diabetes, but 60% of them do not know it. Healthy China 2030 aims to address diabetes and other public health issues by prompting communities to play a bigger role in disease prevention, education, screening, and management—areas where peer support programs are proving beneficial.

Managing diabetes requires effective primary care, specialty care, and attention to patients’ psychosocial and mental health needs to help them in coping with a chronic illness. Peer support programs offer practical and emotional support to help individuals living with diabetes better manage their health.

In 2016, the MSD* Foundation provided additional support to help expand a diabetes peer support program initiated by the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health in partnership with researchers and diabetes specialists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University-affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital in Shanghai China.

Through an $866,000, five-year (2016–2020) grant to the University of North Carolina (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health, the MSD Foundation is helping support the development, implementation, and evaluation of a diabetes peer support program in nine community health centers (CHCs) in Shanghai and facilitate the dissemination of the resulting model across the city’s 240 CHCs.

*MSD is known as Merck & Co., Inc. in the United States & Canada