Get to Know Your Risk for Diabetes

Diabetes is one of the top ten leading causes of death and disability in the United States, and most likely, according to CDC, underreported. Studies have further shown that the risk of death among people with diabetes is about twice that of people without diabetes of similar age.

In 2005, 20.8 million people of all ages – 7.0% of the population – suffer from diabetes, and about 6.2 million of them are undiagnosed. If not dying from the disease or its complications, people with diabetes spend millions of dollars treating it. The total annual cost of diabetes in 2002 was about $132 billion, representing about 11% of the total US health care expenditure that year and accounting for nearly 88 million disability days.

The impact of diabetes on the population’s health and the economy is clearly undeniable, but its impact on racial and ethnic minorities is even more profound. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanic/Latino Americans, and American Indians/Alaska Natives are roughly two times likely to have diabetes and suffer worse outcomes.

Unfortunately, the prevalence of diabetes among the Asian-American population is largely unknown. Yet in 2002, diabetes ranked 5th among the diseases that caused deaths in the Asian-American population. The potential burden – if it is not already - of this disease on Asian-Americans is immense considering that diabetes is closely associated with heart and cerebrovascular diseases that are the 2nd and 3rd causes of mortality within this group. The few studies that exist on this subject suggest that certain groups within this population have an increased and growing risk for diabetes. An ethnically-targeted information and education drive regarding diabetes is urgently needed for the at-risk Asian-American population.

Banyan Tree (Stephen Malkoff) Like the Banyan tree, our ideas can branch off and take root.

Personally, I am yet to meet a fellow Filipino-American whose family tree does not include someone with diabetes. As a group, we must pay serious attention to this disease and elevate our awareness of its risks and consequences.

In planning for this post, I visited the website of the American Diabetes Association and found a handy test that one can take to assess his or her risk of getting diabetes. The test is of course in no way an alternative to one's own doctor's assessment, but it can serve the purpose of teaching us the risks that we must watch out for. Take the ADA Diabetes Risk Test now. You can also click on this link and learn more about Type 2 diabetes and what you can do about it.

Diabetes is one of the most common and well-studied diseases, yet it continues to plague many people and cost tremendous amount of money as well as production and opportunity losses. There is yet no cure for diabetes once you get it, but you can certainly do something to prevent it.

Filipinos: Don't Be Another Cancer Statistic

Summer months in California usually mean "fiesta time" for Filipino- Americans. Festivals celebrating the Filipino-American culture and heritage are often held in public parks nationwide at this time. I went to such an event two weeks ago at the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. Besides the usual booths that hawk everything from bbq anything to T-shirts that proudly scream "Pinoy", this particular fair also boasts of a "health pavillion." The "pavillion" was unfortunately propped on the top floor of a building at the margins of the the fair grounds itself so it was sadly overlooked. Nonetheless, it is encouraging to note that a serious effort is afoot to pay more attention to the health affairs of the Filipino-Americans.


A health booth focusing on cancer among the Asian-American population caught my eye for its noticeably ethnically-targeted literature. The Filipino Cancer Education Resource Catalog was particularly impressive in its valinat attempt to put together an information packet that directs Filipino health consumers to specific resources for various kinds of cancer. The pamphlet is written in both English and Tagalog and a product of a collaboration between the Filipino Community Cancer Collaborative and institutions such as the American Cancer Society, UCSF and various Asian and Pacific Islanders health organizations among others.


Such interest in cancer in Asian-Americans made me think of the threat of this disease to this population. While the available information on the burden of cancer in Asian-American population is hardly exhaustive, the literature is promisingly growing. I posted several articles on this blog that I think shed a much-needed light on the status of cancer among this ethnic group.

According to the American Cancer Society, Asian-Americans are the only group for which deaths from cancer exceeded that of deaths from heart disease. Cancer is the leading cause of death for female Asian-Americans since 1980. Plaguing these women's health are cervical and breast cancers - mostly attributed to lack of preventive care and late detection of the disease. Clearly, information about and access to information, services and support is a very serious issue for this group.

Filipinos ranked the poorest in surviving colon and rectal cancers of all the US ethnic groups, perhaps due to late detection of the disease as well. Likewise, Filipinos have more cases of and deaths from prostate cancer compared with other Asians. While the reason for this is not immediately known, high-saturated diet and obesity had been named as likely culprits. Westernized diets and obesity are also implicated in the cases of and deaths from breast cancer among Filipino women which surpassed all other Asian ethnic groups. Educating Filipinos about theirs risks to get cancer is incredibly crucial to stem the alarming upward trend of incidence and mortality rates for specific cancers. Awareness of the risks should convince Filipinos to seek preventive services and to adopt preventive health behavior. After all, when it comes to cancer (and true for other diseases as well) early detection could prevent early death.

Different Folks

(Cover; Documentary: John Wehman, Filipino-Americans: Discovering their Past for the Future, 1994)

According to the the 2005 Bureau of Census estimates, there are now about 14 million people who call themselves Asian-Americans in the United States - accounting for about a little over 5% of the total population. This estimate shows a growth of over 60% since the 1990 census, making the Asian-Americans the fastest growing of all the racial/ethnic groups. Such massive growth is expected in the future given that we are younger than the national population and our life expectancy the longest among all groups.

Why is such information important? Well, this means that as a political and social group, Asian-Americans is certainly a growingly important number to reckon with. As our numbers grow, so do our needs, our impact, and hopefully, proportionally, our influence too. The implications of these statistics on public policies and allocation of resources and services should be seriously considered. We should be at the forefront of such discussions if our interests are going to be well-served.

These days, such discussions often center around health care, access and costs. We must realize that we have unique health needs that are only magnified by our diversity, and that we are faced with barriers that affect our health and well-being.

The Office of Minority Health - an agency created by the Department of Health and Human Services in 1986 charged with improving and protecting the health of racial and ethnic minority populations - recognized this much. The following is an excerpt of the agency's profile of Asian American health:

Asian Americans contend with numerous factors which may threaten their health. Some negative factors are infrequent medical visits due to the fear of deportation, language/cultural barriers, and the lack of health insurance. Asian Americans are most at risk for the following health conditions: cancer, heart disease, stroke, unintentional injuries (accidents), and diabetes. Asian Americans also have a high prevalence of the following conditions and risk factors: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hepatitis B, HIV/AIDS, smoking, tuberculosis, and liver disease.

Information such as this should alert us about the areas that we must pay close attention to. Ideally, specific resources should abound that would lend us a ready hand when our needs arise, but sadly this is not yet so. But growing work is at hand to fill the the void where resources, research and information should be that are responsive to the needs of the Asian-Americans.

Meanwhile, we must equip ourselves with information that would be helpful in influencing policies and shaping public opinion. Politicians and policy-makers are famous about "knowing their constituency." We must do the same thing; we must know ourselves - who we are, what we do, what our needs are, and why we are relevant. Only by knowing it ourselves can we convince others of our own significance. Every policy or program that deal with populations begins with statistics - indeed, there is power in numbers so to speak. There is a wealth of information in our demographics. I suggest that we start getting interested about what the census say about us. I am posting two links on the Chop Reads section of this blog to two informative documents published by the US Census in 2000 and 2004. These two documents: The Asian Population: 2000 and We the People: Asians in United States, 2004 provide a details about the distribution and important health, economic, political and social characteristics of the Asian-American population.