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Tailored notification encouraging examinees with abnormal glucose levels in health checkups to seek medical care

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Abstract

The aims of this study were to generate a written notification message using social marketing methods to encourage examinees with abnormal glucose levels to seek medical care and to evaluate the optimized message. A semi-structured interview was conducted among examinees with abnormal glucose levels who had never visited a medical clinic for diagnosis of hyperglycemia. Patients were divided into two segments. A tailored notification letter was developed according to these segments using a social marketing approach. Other examinees were prospectively enrolled as the control group. The tailored notification for Segment 1 included a web code to access a health care provider. Future loss of time and money was emphasized in the message for Segment 2. According to responses in a telephone interview, 654 examinees with abnormal fasting glucose levels in a health checkup were divided into Group 1 (n = 178), Group 2 (n = 24), and a control group (n = 452) and given a tailored or conventional notification letter. The proportion of examinees who actually visited a health care provider in Group 1 (20.8%) was significantly higher than that in the control group (11.1%); no examinees in Group 2 visited a health care provider. Receipt of a tailored notification was a significant factor associated with visiting a health care provider, independent of age, sex, or severity of glucose abnormality (odds ratio 1.77; p = 0.02). Our results showed that tailored notification developed using a social marketing approach prompted health checkup examinees with abnormal glucose levels to seek medical care.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ms. Yoshiko Tohmine of Cancer Scan for her advice in this study, Mr. Shuji Matsumura for his cooperation in creating the messages, Professor Atsushi Kawaguchi for his advice on the statistical analysis, and Brian Quinn of Japan Medical Communication for English language editing. We also thank Analisa Avila, MPH, ELS, of Edanz (https://jp.edanz.com/ac) for editing a draft of this manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by grants for medical staff from the Japan Association for Diabetes Education and Care.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka City, Fukuoka, 812-8582, Japan

    Miki Nagafuchi & Kimie Fujita

  2. Division of Nursing, Saga University Hospital, 5‑1‑1 Nabeshima, Saga City, Saga, 849‑8501, Japan

    Miki Nagafuchi

  3. Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, 5‑1‑1 Nabeshima, Saga City, Saga, 849-8501, Japan

    Hirokazu Takahashi & Keizo Anzai

  4. Liver Center, Saga University Hospital, 5‑1‑1 Nabeshima, Saga City, Saga, 849‑8501, Japan

    Hirokazu Takahashi

  5. Saga branch of the Japanese Health Insurance Association, 7-28 Gofukumachi, Saga City, Saga, 840-0824, Japan

    Miki Hidaka & Tsuyoshi Matsushita

Authors
  1. Miki Nagafuchi
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  2. Hirokazu Takahashi
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  3. Keizo Anzai
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  4. Miki Hidaka
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  5. Tsuyoshi Matsushita
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  6. Kimie Fujita
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kimie Fujita.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and later versions.

Ethics approval

This study protocol was approved by the Certified Review Board of Saga University Hospital and performed in accordance with the principles of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki, revised in 2013. (Approval number: 2017-07-03: date of approval: October 2, 2017).

Informed consent

Written informed consent was obtained from the 13 examinees who helped generate the optimized letter. For the interventional study, written general informed consent was obtained; examinees who agreed to be involved in the medical and public health study were included.

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Cite this article

Nagafuchi, M., Takahashi, H., Anzai, K. et al. Tailored notification encouraging examinees with abnormal glucose levels in health checkups to seek medical care. Diabetol Int 13, 262–271 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13340-021-00534-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13340-021-00534-1

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