Educating Hispanics About Diabetes is Critical

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For clinicians providing health care for vulnerable populations, such as low-income patients, ethnic minorities or immigrants who speak little English, educating about the risks of diabetes can be daunting, but it is especially critical among Hispanics, the Clinical Advisor reports.

Health care practitioners may need to navigate language barriers, cultural differences and health-literacy challenges to effectively educate patients, according to the news report. 

Diabetes is the seventh-leading cause of death in the U.S.

Hispanics face many grim diabetes disparities, according to the report:

• 10.5% percent of Hispanics ages 20 or older have diabetes
• 8.2% percent of Cubans
• 11.9% percent of Mexican Americans
• 12.6% percent of Puerto Ricans

Other data show that Hispanics who live along the U.S.-Mexico border are nearly twice as likely to have diabetes than whites. Hispanics also are more likely to have end-stage renal disease and are 50% more likely to die from their diabetes, according to the CDC’s Prevention Research Center.

Complications from uncontrolled diabetes can often be avoided with effective disease is management, but a patient can only manage their disease properly if they understand it.

Read more from the Clinical Advisor here.