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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

Plus3

Plus3 offers customizable web and mobile apps that combine traditional workplace wellness strategies with corporate charitable-giving programs to increase motivation for employees to be healthy. With a variety of incentives, including challenges, competitions, charitable rewards, personal rewards, and family participation, every employee can find the best personal motivation. Employees engage with Plus3 through an app …

Cigna Sunday Streets

The Cigna Sunday Streets initiative closes a major section of streets in Houston, Texas, on one Sunday per month, six Sundays per year – allowing residents to walk, bike, and jog along the roads. A variety of businesses on these routes provide entertainment and programs during the event. After the success of the City of …

Cooking Matters

Cooking Matters, which provides free cooking and nutrition classes for adults, children, and families living in underserved communities, is based on the premise that nutrition education should be coupled with cooking lessons so that meals can be healthy and enjoyable. By partnering with local organizations, Cooking Matters achieves both national-scope and optimization through customizability. The Cooking Matters …

View All Programs In Prevention

San Diego, CA

http://www.skinnygeneproject.org/

J. Moss Foundation

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

Innovator

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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.
  1. Prevention needs to start before people develop prediabetes. Comprehensive interventions begin in childhood or even before birth
    Read More
  2. The DPP is not the answer
    Read More
  3. There is widespread misperception about what constitutes meaningful lifestyle change
    Read More

Prevention

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