Research Article
Doreen Mukona
Abstract
Health education is important to promote good lifestyle behaviours and prevent/delay onset of type II diabetes mellitus. There is substantial evidence from developed countries supporting the importance of diabetes selfmanagement education in promoting adherence to therapy and glycaemic control. The purpose of this systematic review (SR) was to identify the impact of educational interventions on glycaemic control and other related outcomes in African populations. Pubmed, CINAHL, EMBASE and Google Scholar data bases were searched. Search terms for diabetes were; diabetes, hyperglycaemia and diabetes mellitus. Search terms for educational interventions were; health education, health education model, health education programme, health education framework, health education intervention and patient education. Included were RCTs that had tested the effectiveness or impact of health education interventions on people with diabetes mellitus in Africa, had recruited concurrent controls, aimed to promote good glycaemic control in diabetic patients and focused on at least one area of lifestyle management. Studies were eliminated if they were not RCTs, were conducted on health professionals, had no accessible full text article, had recruited mixed populations (diabetic and non-diabetic) and if they did not have English titles and abstracts. The cut-off period for publications ensured inclusion of current evidence in the systematic review. Nine studies were included in the SR. Substantial heterogeneity existed among studies thus no head to head comparisons could be done, hence, there is no reliable evidence favouring superiority of one intervention over another