rationale and design of the dptransfers project diabetes preventiontransferring findings from european research to society in catalonia background compelling evidence has been accumulated to support the effectiveness of intensive lifestyle intervention in delaying progression to type 2 diabetes even in people identified as being at high risk determined by the finnish diabetes risk score the deplancat project diabetes in europeprevention using lifestyle physical activity and nutritional interventioncatalonia evidenced that intensive lifestyle intervention was feasible and costeffective on a short scale in reallife primary care settings at least over 4 years however transferring such lifestyle interventions to society remains the major challenge of research in the field of diabetes preventionmethodsdesign the derived dptransfers diabetes preventiontransferring findings from european research to society is a large scale national programme aimed at translating a tailored lifestyle intervention to the maximum of primary care centres where feasible through a core proposal agreed with all the partners the method is built upon a 3step screening intervention and followup reallife communitywide structure on the basis of a dual intensity lifestyle intervention basic and continuity modules and supported by a 4channel transfer strategy institutional relationships facilitators workshops collaborative groupware and programme web page participation will initially cover nine health departments 7 million inhabitants through nine coordinating centres located in metropolitan 32 million semiurban 29 million and rural 09 million areas from which it is expected accessing 25 of all primary care settings equivalent to 90 associated centres 1618 million people with an estimate of 032 million participants aged 4575 years at high risk of future development of diabetes to ascertain sustainability effect satisfaction and quality of the translation programme statistical analyses will be performed from both the entire population facilitators and participants and a stratified representative sample obtained by collecting data from at least 920 participantsdiscussion the dptransfers will use a strategy of approach to society consistent with the impact of the disease and the fast accessibility provided by primary care settings in catalonia both the widespread effect of the lifestyle intervention and the translational process itself could be assessed