Diabetes Outreach Initiative Case Study

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Background The leading cause of death in DeKalb County, Georgia is diabetes. Diabetes can cause serious health complications including heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, and lower-extremity amputations (CDC, 2015). When a person has diabetes their body either does not make enough insulin or cannot use its own insulin as well as they should. In DeKalb County, 51.8% females and 48.2% males from 2005 to 2010 had diabetes (DeKalb Medical, 2013). There were 422 deaths from diabetes in this county from 2005 to 2010 (DeKalb Medical, 2013). Mission The mission of the diabetes outreach initiative is to improve and promote a healthy living for those people affected by diabetes by leading the DeKalb County community through educational prevention, management, and care. Proposed Diabetes Program The Diabetes Outreach initiative’s focus is to educate, prevent, and treat individuals in the urban community. The goal of this initiative is to help the community to become aware of all the community resources to decrease the number of men and women that are at risk or do not know that they have diabetes. Decreasing the prevalence of diabetes in DeKalb County and in return, prevent the onset of type 2 …show more content…

According to the CDC, 7.9 million adults age 20 and up had pre-diabetes in 2011(Empower, 2011). Prediabetes means that a person’s blood glucose (sugar) level is higher than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes (CDC, 2015). Nearly 90 percent of adults who have prediabetes do not know they have it. Although having prediabetes can to lead to diabetes-related eye disease or kidney disease, there is a higher risk of developing vascular disease, such a heart attack and stroke. Eleven percent of people that are diagnosed with prediabetes proceeded to develop diabetes within three