The Stanford Youth Diabetes Coaches Program consists of 8 sessions, each one hour in length.  They are designed to be taught once a week for eight weeks in order to give students the week to meet with their team member (person they are coaching) and work on their health goals - which they will report on in the next class.

For each class, the curriculum includes a power point presentation, an instructor’s guide with a script, a printable in-class quiz, and a printable coaching assignment.  Each of the eight classes include training in becoming a diabetes coach (communication skills, setting achievable goals through action plans, behavior change strategies, and problem solving) and diabetes and health lessons (understanding diabetes, blood sugar management, nutrition, healthy meal planning, physical activity, maintaining a healthy weight, managing stress, and partnering with a health care provider).  Each class is designed to maximize student engagement with resident instructors and includes check-ins, short embedded video clips, role plays, and discussion prompts. 

If you have a relationship with a local high school, that school is the best place to start. Contact the school representative you know best and let them know you are interested in bringing doctors into their classrooms to teach healthy high school students how to become diabetes coaches for family members or friends with diabetes.  We recommend that the program be provided for students in the 10th-12th grade, although mature 9th graders could also participate.  A brief meeting with the principal or other administrative proxy is important to make sure the school recognizes the value of the program and safeguards time for students to participate. 

It’s important to let principals, administrators, and teachers know how this program will benefit their students.  You may tell them the program 1) is designed to prepare students for standardized tests with each class including a multiple choice quiz and quiz review; 2) has been proven to increase students’ self-worth and feelings of belonging, as well as diabetes and general health knowledge; 3) provides students with tools for effective goal setting and problem solving; 4) increases students’ health literacy; and 5) brings physician mentors into the classroom to serve as role models for students.

While it is important to “sell” the program to the high school, it is also important that the principal, administration, and teachers understand that you are volunteering your time to do a service for their students.  We recommend saying, “The doctors will be leaving their patients and work in the hospital in order to come to your school.  We want to make sure that students be available and ready when the doctors arrive.”

The SYDCP has been successfully implemented in a variety of ways. Although it is usually most rewarding for instructors when implemented as an elective course (where all students have chosen to participate) during an advisory time during the school day or as an after-school activity, many schools do not have the resources to support implementation of an elective course. For that reason, some schools have chosen to make the course mandatory during the school day for a select group of students – for example, 10th graders in a biological science class.  Although some of the students in a mandatory class may not have a family member or close friend with diabetes, the structure of the program allows students to coach anyone who wants to get healthier. Interestingly, we have found that the program has a bigger impact on students in mandatory settings (likely because their baseline scores are lower). Additionally, the SYDCP has been successfully implemented as part of summer programs and school based health centers. Flexibility is always a key element when determining the best organization of the program.