ROMEO Ripensare l'Educazione e gli Outcomes per Migliorare l'Educazione.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is predominantly managed during daily life by the persons with the disease and/or their carers. Understanding diabetes, informed choices of management opportunities and acquisition of skills for successful self-management play important roles in achieving optimal outcomes, but these needs are not always met by conventional clinical consultations. Structured programs should not only improve patients’ knowledge and skills, but also help motivate and sustain them in taking control of their condition and deliver effective self-management. In the past 20 years we have developed a self-management education model, Group Care (GC), that was shown to cost-effectively improve quality of life, clinical variables and reduce cardiovascular risk. In particular, the efficacy of GC was demonstrated by ROMEO (Rethink Organization to iMprove Education and Outcomes), a 4-year multicentre clinical trial involving 815 patients of 13 Italian-diabetes clinics.