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The Anthology of Bright Spots
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Skinny Gene Project

In Prevention

  • Skinny Gene offers an online DPP, a brick-and-mortar DPP, and community events like cooking classes for participants in San Diego County.
  • The variety of options, whether online, in-person, or community-based, allow participants to choose the program that best fits their needs.
  • DPP programs have a partnership with SideKick health, which provides mobile support and easy information logging.
  • Skinny Gene is organized by the J. Moss Foundation, a nonprofit organization committed to reducing health disparities and bringing health to underserved populations in the San Diego Area.
While Skinny Gene’s DPP is available to all as a paid program, it is a non-profit focused on reducing health disparities through diabetes prevention. As such, many of its efforts and events are directed toward disadvantaged communities within San Diego County.
  • Summary
  • Why It Stands Out

Summary

The Skinny Gene Project is a non-profit based in San Diego focused on helping people—especially those in underserved communities—prevent diabetes. Skinny Gene takes a multi-pronged approach to preventing type 2 diabetes. At the community level, it offers cooking classes, educational games and video screenings, and other events focused on bringing about increasing awareness of diabetes prevention.[1] For individuals, Skinny Gene offers a CDC-recognized, in-person Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), as well as a virtual DPP featuring one-on-one coaching and group support. In this way, participants can choose whether an in-person or virtual DPP is best for them.[2] Skinny Gene has also partnered with SideKick Health, which offers a free app designed to make the program more convenient, with activity tracking, food logging, suggestions for healthy living, and a gamified system for monitoring progress.[3] While Skinny Gene’s DPP is available to all as a paid program, it is a non-profit focused on reducing health disparities through diabetes prevention. As such, many of its efforts and events are directed toward disadvantaged communities within San Diego County.

Why It Stands Out

Skinny Gene showcases the strength of combining many sorts of interventions: a traditional brick-and-mortar group DPP, a virtual DPP option, and community-level interventions to address underlying social determinants of health. While its DPP curriculum is not unique in any major way, it is the combination of this program with broad community interventions that demonstrates Skinny Gene’s understanding that prevention requires both individual behavior change and a supportive environment.

  1. “What We Do,” Skinny Gene Project, n.d., http://www.skinnygeneproject.org/what-we-do/.
  2. Ibid.
  3. “Skinny Gene Project,” Skinny Gene Project, n.d., http://www.skinnygeneproject.org

More Programs in Prevention

Smart Choice and Healthy Beverage Programs

As joint programs, Smart Choice and Healthy Beverage aim to make healthier food and drink options available on the various medical campuses of the University of California, San Francisco. Smart Choice created a standardized system for communicating nutritional information, including printing nutrition facts on receipts and labeling healthy choices with a recognizable logo. The Smart …

Fruit & Vegetable Prescription (FVRx) Program

The FVRx Program, by Wholesome Wave, enables healthcare providers to write individual prescriptions for fruits and vegetables for low-income patients working to adopt healthy lifestyle changes. Patients can redeem their prescribed fruits and vegetables at participating retailers, grocery stores, and farmer’s markets. Produce is either donated directly or paid for through donations. Patients enrolled in …

YMCA Diabetes Prevention Program

As the first real-life translation of the DPP study, the YMCA’s DPP program demonstrated that the study’s methods and structure could be effective in real-life settings. By using a group-based model and its own employees as program facilitators, the YMCA significantly reduces program costs. After completion of the core sessions, participants attend monthly maintenance sessions …

View All Programs In Prevention

San Diego, CA

http://www.skinnygeneproject.org/

J. Moss Foundation

Behavior Change, DPP Translation, Online/App-Based/Digital

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Insights

Prevention presents a massive opportunity to save both lives and money. In the United States, the direct costs of diabetes, not counting lost productivity and early death or disability, is nearing $200 billion per year, and growing fast.
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Prevention

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