Week 5 Intervention: Diabetes Type 2 in African Americans

Diabetes Type 2 in African Americans
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Introduction
Diabetes is a disease that affects the manner in which the body treats and handles glucose that comes in to the blood stream. More than 27 million persons in the US alone are suffering from the disease and another 86 million have a condition called prediabetes; which simply means that they have high blood sugar only that it is not high enough to be rated as having diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2016). Diabetes type 2, is one of the types of the disease and it involves poor use of insulin. This means that person with type 2 diabetes have their pancreas producing insulin, but their cells do not have the ability to utilize the hormone as they should, to handle blood sugar properly (WebMD, 2016). As such, the sugar in the blood keeps building up and eventually the pancreas is overrun causing diabetes. There are a number of factors that have been identified to lead to this form of dysfunction in the body cells among them, genes, too much glucose sent by the liver, metabolic syndrome, poor communication between the cells, extra weight and even beta cells that may be broken (WebMD, 2016). The prevalence of diabetes among the African Americans compared to the other races is quite high. Of all the African Americans aged 20 years and above, 13.2% have been diagnosed with diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2016). It is also apparent that African Americans are 1.7 more times likely to develop diabetes than the non-Hispanic whites. African Americans are also likely to develop type 2 diabetes at the rate of 1.2 to 2.3 times higher than the European Americans (Chesla et al., 2004). The disease is associated with high rates of risky complications and disabilities. This calls for a sustainable intervention to help manage the disease. Establishing intervention that is based on family life is crucial, relative to the fact that patients can get the level of assistance and support that they need from their loved ones.
Intervention
Some of the programs that have been identified in the past have focused much on the culture, especially the food management, exercises and in some of the cases the African American values have been incorporated. There are some concerns that have been identified relative to caring for African American patients with diabetes type 2. The main concerns include, managing the disease in a manner that takes into consideration the African foods, participating in social gatherings that involve foods, having access to the proper management of the disease, dealing with the issues surrounding trusting the health car...