social or economic impact of endstage renal disease. It is therefore imperative to assure in our health systems that general practitioners and family physicians have the ability and commitment to detect early manifestations of diabetes mellitus complications, and to promote the prescription of lifestyle changes and medication that favor regression or retard highly morbid cardiovascular and renal conditions. In addition, continued professional development for health care is an important tool for health improvement of communities, and it is considered as a means to maintain high standards of care as well as of improvement on recruiting, motivating, and retaining high quality staff [44]. Although the process needed to create infrastructure and local educational programs has to be planned from the inside of each country considering special needs and characteristics of the society where it will be implemented, global assistance, when possible, may be highly supportive. This may assure greater success and a higher retention of health workers and physicians in the programs. There is scarce information related to the implementation and results of continuous medical education programs directed to first-contact physicians and aimed to modify knowledge and prescription practices of primary and secondary prevention of diabetic kidney disease. In Mexico, we are conducting a research and educational S-74 Correa-Rotter and Gonzalez-Michaca: Diabetic nephropathy prevention in Mexico ´ project directed to first-contact physicians and aimed at primary and secondary prevention of diabetic kidney disease. We believe that programs of this nature may lead to a reduction of the growth in the number of diabetic endstage renal diseases requiring renal replacement therapy, and therefore may lead to a decrease in associated mortality. The project includes the development, validation, and establishment of an educational program in the public health sector at the national level oriented to train general practitioners and family physicians in the knowledge of basic pathophysiology, natural history and, specifically, on prevention and treatment strategies for early complications of diabetes mellitus, with emphasis on diabetic nephropathy. In addition, we have specifically designed instruments for this purpose, in order to evaluate participants’ knowledge at the moment of the program’s initiation and its impact on the acquisition of knowledge and the short and midterm modification of diagnostic and therapeutic attitudes directed to reduction of progression of renal injury. Finally, another objective is to generate increased awareness, motivation, and self assurance on the importance of primary care physicians’ intervention for national public health purposes. This project has been developed by a group of nephrologists, in conjunction with other professionals (epidemiologist, sociologist, and teaching professionals), and includes oral presentations, written documents, posters with algorithms, as well as directed case discussions. Once developed, it will be applied and validated by means of an experimental study, in which selected health centers will be randomly chosen to participate as experimental or control centers. Physicians from control health centers will receive standard educational and information opportunities, yet no specific, directed intervention will be provided to physicians of experimental centers. Both will be evaluated and monitored in the same form, so that the results can be compared. The capacity to modify diagnostics and therapeutic attitudes in the educative program will be measured by evaluation of participant physicians before and after receiving the qualification on diabetic nephropathy, and comparing these results with practices of physicians from control centers (patient questionnaires exploring medical indications and recommendations at 6 months after implementation of the program, and patient chart comparisons on indications and prescriptions after the educational maneuver at 6 months after the program is concluded). This is a nationwide program to be implemented initially by 30 collaborating nephrologists, educators, and health promoters (educators and coinvestigators), who will be carefully trained in a standardized, educational program that is to be provided to 600 general practitioners. Based on the obtained results, a proposal will be developed to implement a permanent national program of education in diabetic nephropathy and other microvascular complications of this disease, and to generate the Mexican guidelines for primary and secondary prevention of diabetic kidney disease. Funding and support for this initiative have been obtained from Mexican government agencies (National Council for Science and Technology) and from the pharmaceutical industry. Success in obtaining the goals of the project is of utmost importance to provide additional evidence of the benefit of investing on education to promote prevention of chronic diseases. CONCLUSION Action for control of chronic complications of diabetes mellitus requires immediate attention that cannot be delayed because this could prove to be extremely costly for emerging nations. An adequate policy implies, among other strategies, the initiation of extensive educational strategies, extrapolating knowledge previously obtained elsewhere