Applying comprehensive community-based approaches in diabetes prevention: rationale, principles, and models

The literature regarding the prevention of diabetes provides few standards for community-based initiatives. The present article offers four principles for engaging communities in comprehensive community approaches to diabetes prevention including (1) facilitating meaningful and central roles for communities, (2) giving primary attention to participatory processes rather than to best practices, (3) emphasizing cultural relevance in designing interventions particularly in racial and ethnic communities, and (4) incorporating social ecology approaches that are holistic and that address larger environmental influences rather than individual behavioral change alone. In order that community public health practitioners may operationalize the principles, models are provided for each.