Public Health Initiative To Motivate People To Actively Manage Their Type 2 Diabetes

NAPSI: Did you know that approximately one in every 11 adults in the United States has diagnosed diabetes?1 Type 2 diabetes accounts for approximately 90 to 95 percent of all cases of diagnosed diabetes in adults.2 Unfortunately, despite exercising, eating right and anti-diabetic treatment, nearly half of adults living with type 2 diabetes still do not have their blood sugar levels under control.3 Given that diabetes is a progressive disease, uncontrolled blood sugar over time may increase the risk of health complications, such as blindness, kidney disease, nerve damage, heart disease, amputations and stroke.4

One challenge that people with type 2 diabetes may face is the ability to have an effective and open conversation with their health care team, including their endocrinologist, about their blood sugar goals and how to effectively manage their disease. On the flip side, health care professionals are challenged to cover a broad range of important information with their patients during a relatively short office visit.

“As a practicing endocrinologist, I’ve noticed that people with type 2 diabetes and doctors struggle to have a meaningful dialogue about this condition, making it challenging to create an effective, comprehensive treatment program for each patient,” said Jeffrey I. Mechanick, M.D., FACP, FACE, FACN, secretary of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE).

To face this challenge, AACE and its educational arm—the American College of Endocrinology (ACE)—has teamed up with Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca to launch a public health initiative called The Type 2 Talk: Changing the Type 2 Diabetes Conversation™ in an effort to help patients and physicians work together to reach treatment goals.

The program features a website that brings a new perspective to the physician-patient conversations by highlighting the unique viewpoints of each party, thus fostering a deeper mutual understanding of each other’s needs. TheType2Talk.com provides current insights, polls, eye-opening facts, information on treatment guidelines, and the latest news on living better with type 2 diabetes.

For more information on The Type 2 Talk program, including how to download your free worksheets that can help improve conversations between patients and their health care team, visit www.TheType2Talk.com.

1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Health Interview Survey, 1997-March 2010. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/201009_14.pdf. Accessed December 2, 2010.

2National Diabetes Statistics, 2007. National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, Available at: http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/statistics/. Accessed December 2, 2010.

3Ong et al. Prevalence, Treatment, and Control of Diagnosed Diabetes in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2004. Ann. Epidemiol. 2008; 18:222-229.

4National Diabetes Statistics, 2007. National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, Available at: http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/statistics/. Accessed November 12, 2010.

North American Precis Syndicate, Inc.