The Project DIRECT (Diabetes Intervention Reaching and Educating Communities Together) began as an eight-year demonstration project in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1995. It was funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The program focused on improving self-care as well as access to, and quality of diabetes care. The program included three components: outreach, health promotion, and diabetes care. Outreach events included television shows, newspaper advertisements, and recruiting local pastors to encourage their church members to seek diabetes screening and engage in prevention. Health promotion included a walking program, encouraging local churches to provide low-fat lunch meals, and hosting health fairs in the community. The diabetes care component included quality of care workshops for health professionals and diabetes self-management workshops for people living with diabetes.

After the completion of the demonstration period, the project was continued under the operation of Strengthening the Black Family, Inc. organization in Raleigh.

The goal of the Project DIRECT was to reduce the burden of diabetes and its impact on the African-American community through partnerships with the community in Raleigh, NC.

Pre and post intervention surveys were conducted in 1996-1997 and 2003-2004. The intervention community in Raleigh was compared to the control community in Greensboro.

By the end of the program, the intervention community experienced a significant decrease in self-reported sedentary behavior (39.4% to 29%) as compared to the control community (35.2% to 32.7%). In addition, the intension to lose weight was significantly higher in the intervention community (increasing from 76.5% to 85.4%), compared to the control community (increasing from 84.3% to 86.6%). Lastly, although diabetes prevalence increased in both communities, the intervention community experienced less of an increase (10.5% to 16.7%) as compared to the control community (9.3% to 18.6%). Overall, the locally designed program made a positive impact on behavioral change in diabetes prevention and care in the community.