[Evaluation of the behavioral program in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a randomized clinical trial]

The scope of this article was to evaluate the effect of the behavioral group education program and telephone intervention in modifying psychological attitudes, enhancing empowerment, and self-care practices aimed at improving clinical control in type 2 diabetes mellitus. It involved a randomized cluster clinical trial, carried out with 199 people with diabetes. In order to perform intragroup comparisons (final and initial phases) and between groups with respect to the indices of the psychological attitude, empowerment, self-care and glycated hemoglobin level variables, the Generalizing Estimating Equation (GEE) approach was used. In all analyses, a 5% significance level and 95% confidence interval were used. When compared to the CG, the IG showed a significant reduction in the mean values of glycated hemoglobin (95%CI: -1.49 to -0.45), a statistically significant increase in the change in psychological attitude scores (95%CI: 9.70 to 15.40), on the empowerment scale (95%CI: 0.81 to 2.72) and adherence to self-care practices (95%CI: 1.44 to 2.10) at the end of the study. The behavioral program proved to be capable of modifying psychological attitudes, improving empowerment, self-care practices and clinical control.