diabetes is becoming a major problem. According to the National Institute of Health about 8.3% of the population has Diabetes. When you look at the percentage of pre-diabetes – that number is even larger. In 2005-2008, the NIH states that 35% of US adults 20 or older were pre-diabetic and for those 65 years or older that number jumps to 50%. According to the NIH if you applied those numbers to the entire US population about 79 million adults ages 20 or older have pre-diabetes. We’re out of control.
What is going on? This is definitely a major epidemic out of control. The health and financial implications of this are more than we can handle. When you look at the cost of diabetes, not only for the individual, but also for our country – you can see how important it is to get this disease under control. Total costs currently for diabetes is expected to be about 174 billion dollars. It’s estimated that diabetes alone is capable of bankrupting our economy in America. So obviously in larger cities, like Chicago, there are bigger financial tolls that the disease will take.In a city like Chicago, there is also a wide array of ethnic groups. We know today that some ethnic populations are affected more so by diabetes than others, so how will the future of diabetes affect our different ethnic communities? We are beginning to see more and more diabetes education in Chicago, but we need so much more.