By: Marc H. Morial
President and CEO
National Urban League
African Americans are in a state of emergency when it comes to the entire range of health-care issues.
In one sense, there's nothing new about this condition. The lack of adequate health-care was a central feature of the pervasive denial of opportunity black Americans endured before the 1960s, and its effects linger.
Among the many grim statistics which bear witness to that assertion, African Americans constitute nearly half of all Americans living with HIV/AIDS, and African Americans are 30-percent more likely than whites to die from cancer.
But reciting such statistics does not mean accepting them as inevitable.
African Americans must act to beat back the state of siege they endure on health-care issues and improve their quality of life. And we at the National Urban League have pledged to do our share in that effort: We've launched a "National African American Wellness Initiative" to promote healthy eating, fitness, preventive health-care, and to agitate for access to affordable healthcare.
An important part of the initiative is the "Lift Every Voice" diabetes education program" we've forged in partnership with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We want to better educate African Americans about how to avoid getting diabetes and how to control it if they do get it.
People with diabetes have a shortage of insulin or a decreased ability to use insulin, a hormone that enables glucose, or sugar, to enter the body's cells and be converted to energy. If diabetes isn't controlled, the sugar and fats that remain in the blood over time can cause devastating harm to the body's vital organs. Kidney disease, eye disease and blindness, circulatory problems, heart disease, flue and pneumonia-related death, and complications of pregnancy in women are some of the health problems diabetes can cause.
Diabetes is a scourge. More than 17 million Americans are either Type 1, which most often appears during childhood or adolescence; or have the far more common Type 2.
The latter most often appears after age 40; but, because it is linked to obesity and lack of physical exercise, Type 2 diabetes has in the last decade recorded explosive growth among American adolescents ensnared, like their elders, by diets including too much fast- and processed foods and by sedentary television watching and electronic game-playing habits.
Another 16 million Americans have "prediabetes—that is, their blood sugar level is almost high enough to be classified as diabetes.
True to form, African Americans suffer disproportionately from diabetes compared to all other Americans but Native Americans. Nearly 11 percent of all African Americans, about 2.3 million people, have diabetes, more than a quarter of all African-American women over 50 has diabetes, and African-Americans' death rate for diabetes is more than twice that of whites.
This situation is all the more tragic because diabetes is largely preventable for those who don't have it and controllable for those who do. A regimen fashioned in consultation with a physician or other health-care giver of eating healthy foods and exercising moderately and consistently is what's needed.
Our Lift Every Voice effort uses the reach our 105 affiliates have in their local communities to make more African Americans aware of the diabetes scourge. This includes knowledge of such possible indications of the disease as: losing weight without trying to, needing to use the bathroom often, feeling thirsty or hungry for no reason, having trouble seeing, feeling tired much of the time, having dry skin or sores that are slow to heal, enduring frequent infections, and feeling tingling or numbness in the hands or feet.
Further, our affiliates in Columbus, Ohio, Richmond, Virginia, Houston, Texas, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Seattle, Washington, and a host of other cities are helping spread diabetes awareness by establishing in-house diabetes educational resource centers, and helping other community organizations and individuals spread the word and take action.
For example, the Rhode Island Urban League operates a screening program in conjunction with health centers and churches to identify undiagnosed hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol among African American women over 40. The Greater Jackson (Mississippi) Urban League sponsors a nutritionist to counsel residents of its housing program on preparing healthy meals and other steps to avoid diabetes. The Palm Beach County (Florida) Urban League holds health fairs to bring together African-American seniors and uninsured families to discuss diabetes prevention.
African Americans aren't the only ones in need of diabetes education. In all, federal studies have estimated that nearly six million Americans who have diabetes don't know they have it.
But we're fully aware that African Americans' quest for opportunity and equality will prove elusive if they're beset by poor health. There's no question that healthier eating habits, frequent exercise and timely physical checkups can make a huge difference in warding off debilitating and dangerous diseases.
In this arena, as in so many others, the burden is not African Americans' alone to bear; but we at the National Urban League pledge that we will do our part in convincing more African Americans to take better care of themselves.
For information about diabetes prevention, contact the National Urban League at 212-558-5300.
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