Measuring the global diabetes targets in the WHO European Region: key learnings

Five global diabetes targets were developed to strengthen the prevention and control of diabetes. This report summarizes the early learning from the initiative of the WHO Regional Office for Europe to establish a robust assessment of performance against the five global diabetes targets in the WHO European Region. 

The report is accompanied by in-depth country case studies. The WHO Regional Office for Europe worked with a first set of 13 volunteer countries to determine how the global diabetes targets could be measured within different country contexts. Findings are presented for each of the five targets, alongside the overall lessons learned across countries that could be useful for any other country (‎both within the WHO European Region and globally)‎ embarking on a similar exercise to measure their progress against the global diabetes targets. 

Key lessons learned include that: 

1. there is an opportunity to use the global diabetes targets to highlight gaps in care between and within countries and to drive improvements for people living with diabetes; 
2. there were multiple possible approaches and data sources used to measure the targets; and 
3. that it was also possible to meaningfully engage people living with diabetes in the use of diabetes data.