From this post, I have learned the extent of diabetes and its financial impact on the U.S. healthcare system. The greatest insight is the significant increase in medical costs associated with this disease, which rose by 60% in the past years. In this response, I would like to expand on this topic by including the necessity to review different ethnic groups separately, as the impact of this disease varies greatly among them.
However, more detailed statistics reveal major differences in the occurrence of diabetes among specific populations within the United States. There are long-standing issues with resource allocation that must be taken into consideration by public health specialists (Khan et al., 2019). Xu et al. (2018) reveal that “prevalence of type 2 diabetes was 9.4% among Hispanic people, 6.9% among non-Hispanic white people, 12.0% among non-Hispanic black people, and 5.0% among non-Hispanic Asian people” (p. 4). I would like to pose the following question: how can epidemiology principles be applied to these statistics for further improvements of policies that aim to reduce the impact of diabetes on the U.S. population?
My suggestion is to provide additional measures of control of blood glucose for under-resourced communities. The limited access to healthcare is detrimental to the reduction of diabetes occurrence, especially among individuals from low-income households (Khan et al., 2019). In conclusion, epidemiologists who study diabetes have uncovered how type 2 diabetes is linked with lower socioeconomic status. The population of the United States must be adequately represented in public health campaigns that focus on eliminating diseases that disproportionately affect some parts of it, and countermeasures must take this research into consideration.
References
Khan, M. A., Hashim, M. J., King, J. K., Govender, R. D., Mustafa, H., & Al Kaabi, J. (2019). Epidemiology of type 2 diabetes – Global burden of disease and forecasted trends.Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health, 10(1), 107. Web.
Xu, G., Liu, B., Sun, Y., Du, Y., Snetselaar, L. G., Hu, F. B., & Bao, W. (2018). Prevalence of diagnosed type 1 and type 2 diabetes among US adults in 2016 and 2017: Population-based study.BMJ, (362). Web.