Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas: Juntos for Better Health

Juntos for Better Health (Juntos) is a partnership of four community service providers that developed a coordinated health care delivery system among multiple partners in the Texas city of Laredo as well as in the Texas counties, Webb, Zapata, and Jim Hogg. The coordinated system addresses the lack of centralized and comprehensive services in the region.

Study Goals:

The goal of this study was to examine the effectiveness of creating and implementing a Prevention Care Management Unit (PCMU) to increase diabetic patient compliance through attending scheduled behavioral and primary care appointments and subsequent improvement on physical and behavioral outcomes. The study also examined the development of the Juntos partnership, how this partnership facilitated PCMU implementation, and how it established a network of care in the area.

Research Questions:

The research questions were:

1. Did diabetic patients who participated experience greater improvements in blood sugar measures after 12 months when compared to diabetic patients who did not participate in the intervention?
2. When compared to patients who did not participate in the intervention, did patients who participated experience greater improvements in:
   • depressive symptoms after 12 months?
   • quality of life after 12 months?
   • blood pressure after 12 months?
   • body mass index (BMI) after 12 months?

The study also included implementation research questions, which examined the level of program services provided, and the quality of services the intervention group received relative to what was proposed. In addition, the implementation evaluation assessed the extent to which the control group received similar program services

Findings:

The evaluation found the following:

• Intervention participants did not have statistically significant improvement in the blood sugar confirmatory outcome when compared to control participants at 12 months.
• There were no significant differences at 12 months between intervention participants and control group participants on the exploratory variables of Quality of Life, Diastolic Blood Pressure, or BMI.
• Among participants who were obese at baseline, intervention participants BMI increased compared to control participants at 12 months.
• The program was implemented in alignment with the program logic model and with moderate fidelity.

For more information, download the full report and report brief.