For the benefit of the public, the advancement of education amongst healthcare professionals and the public by raising awareness and the provision of training and associated products designed to manage diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other long-term medical conditions, thereby equipping them with the knowledge, skills, confidence and resources to prevent, treat and manage these conditions.

Our Mission? Our aim is to ensure that anyone who is overweight or diagnosed with prediabetes or diabetes has access to good quality and enjoyable structured education that will allow them to develop the knowledge, understanding and confidence to take charge of their condition and improve their health.

Whether you are newly diagnosed or been living with the condition for 20 years, our programmes are for you. Our growing network of 102 centres and more than 600 educators has helped more than a quarter of a million people so far.

We have 4 programmes, these are:

X-PERT Prevention of Diabetes (X-POD)

X-PERT Diabetes

X-PERT Insulin

X-PERT Weight

Written by Dr Trudi Deakin, the X-PERT Programmes are based upon the theories of patient empowerment, discovery learning and patient-centred care. People with diabetes see a healthcare professional for around 3 hours each year and have to spend the remaining 8,757 hours self-managing their condition.The existing government is determined to try and control the cost of health services across the UK through education and awareness and has set up the National Diabetes Awareness and Prevention Programme. This means that everyone who is at risk or has type 2 diabetes should have access to training for self-management. We can demonstrate proven results that X-PERT Health: can reduce the burden of cost on the NHS budgets, uses the most up to date evidence based research, is independent of both the NHS and commercial interests, is the only Diabetes Education and Awareness programme that provides ongoing support, and is NHS NICE guideline accredited.

What is Diabetes? Diabetes is a common condition in which the amount of glucose in the blood at diagnosis is too high because the body cannot use the glucose as energy. Diabetes occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin, or produces insulin but cannot use it properly. There are two types of diabetes:

• Type 1 diabetes occurs when there is a severe lack of insulin in the body because the cells in the pancreas that produce it have been destroyed.
• Type 2 diabetes develops when the body can still make some insulin, but not enough for its needs, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly (known as insulin resistance).