CARRS Translation Trial
Individuals with diabetes are often also diagnosed with obesity, hypertension, and lipid abnormalities, conditions which accelerate cardiovascular disease (CVD), and also serve as the leading worldwide causes of adult-onset blindness, non-traumatic amputations and kidney failure. These inter-related risk factors and co-morbidities result in a multiplicative, rather than additive, amplification of risk. The South Asia region includes three of the ten countries in the world with the highest numbers of total diabetes subjects (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh); the region currently has the highest number of diabetes-related deaths. While only 12% of CVD-related deaths in the US occur in patients between 35-64 years of age, this statistic jumps to 35% in India.
The Center for Cardiometabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia (CARRS) Translation Trial is testing the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an intensive and comprehensive multi-factorial diabetes care intervention delivery strategy. The CARRS Translation Trial targets glucose, blood pressure, and lipid control, as well as treatment plans, among participants who are at moderate-to-high risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Translation research strives to convert available evidence into knowledge that can be used in everyday clinical and public health practice. This includes the application and adaptation of findings from controlled clinical research environments into real-world care. The CARRS Translation Trial incorporates the innovative application of technology, low-cost and skilled personnel, and a structured evidence-based approach into a model that improves risk factor control, quality of life, and health outcomes in the real-life clinical settings of South Asia. Skilled non-physician care coordinators work with new technology to offer an achievable and low cost care delivery method to improve uptake of proven interventions.
The goal of the CARRS Translation Trial is to develop a model for chronic disease care that can be easily and cost-effectively integrated into care delivery without restructuring entire health systems, while also creating a new category of skilled, non-physician health workers — a model that may be replicable for other developing regions of the world.