Oftentimes, social or economic disadvantages prevent a person from living their healthiest life. Last year, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) announced grant funding to support projects that focus on the impact of such health disparities on those with diabetes.

Louise Reagan, an assistant professor at the School of Nursing, received one of those grants — called the Health Disparities and Diabetes Innovative Clinical or Transitional Science Award — as her research focuses on people with diabetes who are reentering society from prison.

Reagan says her team has found that people living with diabetes in prison lack critical knowledge and skills regarding managing their diabetes. As these individuals transition to the community, they are required to self-manage diabetes independently and are not prepared to do so.

Diabetes survival and self-management skills include knowing what foods to eat, how to control blood glucose (sugar), when to take insulin, how to manage sick days, and how to access health care. These skills are critical for incarcerated individuals, as their rate of diabetes diagnosis is almost 50% higher than the general population.

“I wanted to figure out what we could do to reach persons with diabetes at this critical transition period when they’re just getting out of prison and into the community, and how we could help them self-manage their illness,” Reagan says. “The Connecticut Department of Correction (CDOC), a community collaborator and advocate for the needs of persons transitioning from prison to the community, and my team don’t want citizens returning to the community from prison to end up in the emergency room being treated for hypoglycemia or dangerously low blood glucose when it can be prevented.”

Reagan worked as an advanced practice registered nurse in Hartford for 16 years, treating underserved populations with multiple comorbid diseases, including diabetes. This clinical work exposed her to the challenges that people released from prison or living in supervised community housing post-prison release face in self-managing their illness when reentering the community, and inspired her research.

She says many social barriers prevent patients from adequately caring for their own health. It can be challenging to provide diabetes education to recently released patients due to their multiple housing locations, desire for anonymity, and limited access to clinical care.

“I wanted to figure out what we could do to reach persons with diabetes at this critical transition period when they’re just getting out of prison and into the community, and how we could help them self-manage their illness.” — Louise Reagan

Additionally, she says, the priorities of people recently released from prison are often to avoid reentering prison, to find a job, and reestablish social and family relationships rather than manage their diabetes and other aspects of their health.

“Patients have many other competing needs when integrating into their societal roles,” Reagan says. “The Diabetes LIVE JustICE research provides an opportunity to help them with their health.”

Her study — called Diabetes Learning in Virtual Environments Just in Time for Community reEntry (Diabetes LIVE JustICE) — examines the feasibility and acceptability of a mobile app that provides diabetes education, support, and other resources in a virtual environment to people recently released from prison living in supervised community housing or on parole. Reagan’s goal is to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequities for this vulnerable population.

Reagan’s app, called LIVE Outside, contains live sessions with diabetes educators and instructive games to inform users about self-care.

Over the course of 12 weeks, Reagan will be measuring users’ diabetes knowledge, stress, and self-care after using LIVE Outside and comparing it to typical diabetes care education.

The mobile app is a culmination of projects Reagan has been working on since completing her postdoctoral fellowship at New York University. There, she served as a project director for an R01 study using a personal computer-based virtual environment called Diabetes LIVE, which promoted diabetes education to community-dwelling individuals.

Reagan’s proceeding research project with the CDOC, Diabetes Survival Skills (DSS), was an in-person intervention run within CDOC-managed correctional facilities. However, this project experienced attrition as individuals reentered society and could no longer participate, she says.

With collaboration and support from the Connecticut Department of Correction, Reagan anticipated taking in-person DSS interventions beyond prisons to supervised housing facilities to reach recently released individuals. This intervention, however, was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This forced Reagan to get creative with her work, leading to her innovation and the ADA grant.

“I was thinking about my work, and I wondered, ‘what if we use a virtual environment and adapt it to a mobile environment?’ ” Reagan says. “We could adapt the virtual app, use my program from the Diabetes Survival Skills, and blend them into a mobile app.”

“Patients have many other competing needs when integrating into their societal roles. The Diabetes LIVE JustICE research provides an opportunity to help them with their health.” — Louise Reagan

Given the need for diabetes self-management education during the critical transition from prison to the community, the CDOC was excited to work with Reagan again to develop a remote mobile option for the people with diabetes under their care. Reagan then collaborated with her colleagues from Diabetes LIVE — Constance Johnson (UTHealth Houston), Allison Vorderstrasse (University of Massachusetts Amherst), and Stephen Walsh (UConn School of Nursing) — to combine DSS and Diabetes LIVE into a mobile app.

Diabetes LIVE JustICE was created and Reagan applied for the ADA grant to propel her innovation forward.

“My team and I had been talking about making this app mobile,” Reagan says. “The grant allows us to put all our work together to collaborate on this new idea.”

Reagan says she is grateful to have received this grant and for the strong collaboration with and involvement of the CDOC.

“When I received notice that the project was going to be funded, it was just an unbelievable feeling,” she says. “For me, this grant meant I had the opportunity to help underserved populations with their health, and I am so grateful for that. I feel so thankful that we can offer something to these people that sometimes don’t have anything.”

This research is supported by an American Diabetes Association grant #11-21-ICTSHD-05 Health Disparities and Diabetes Innovative Clinical or Translational Science Award. To learn more about the grant program, visit professional.diabetes.org. To learn more about the UConn School of Nursing, visit nursing.uconn.edu and follow the School on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.