Coached Care pairs patients with linguistically and ethnically matched peer "coaches" who have been trained to promote patient participation in the medical visit. The coaches, who themselves have diabetes, meet with patients immediately before each of their regularly scheduled medical visits to encourage active involvement in information seeking and decision-making.

Patients receive one-on-one diabetes education sessions before each medical visit. These sessions are purely informational, and do not include the specific patient activation components of the coached care intervention.

Coached Care pairs patients with linguistically and ethnically matched peer "coaches", who themselves have diabetes, and have been trained to meet with patients immediately before each of their regularly scheduled medical visits to encourage active involvement in information seeking and decision-making. Using a decision tree algorithm, they help patients identify relevant questions about symptoms, barriers to self-management and treatment options to discuss with doctor. They encourage mutual decision-making about tailoring the patient's medication regimen, diet and physical activities and work with the patients to overcome barriers to communication with their doctor. After the medical visit, the coach and patient review any treatment decisions and goals for self-care.

A laboratory measure of blood sugar control

Patient reported general and diabetes-specific measures of quality of life, including SF-36, diabetes burden and others.