Diabetes Public Health Communication

Diabetes is a public health issue that needs a lot of attention. A public health Champaign to prevent this epidemic would be beneficial to the entire world. The worse fear for public health professional should be the not knowing exactly how many people are now unknowingly living with diabetes. 84.1 million adult who is equal to one out of three people in the United States who are living with pre-diabetes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). Diabetes is a major concern starting from the richest to the poorest countries of the world. Diabetes is associated with the risk of morbidity and mortality by creating micro and macro vascular complications; furthermore, People with diabetes has very high risk for multi organs dysfunctions

The question is what public health communication? “Healthy People 2010 defines health communication as “the art and technique of informing, influencing, and motivating individual, institutional, and public audiences about important health issues.”” (Bernhardt, 2004, para 4). As for the Institute of Medicine, they claimed that health communication is what society do collectively to assure the well-being of all (Bernhardt, 2004). Overall, public communication “is the scientific development, strategic dissemination, and critical evaluation of relevant accurate, accessible, and understandable health information communicated to and from an intended audience to advance the health of the public” (Bernhardt, 2004, para 4). With that said, a key element of health communication essential for public health leaders is to be able to communicate in ways to motivate others to take action whether to participates as a leader of the movement of diabetic screening or to be the person motivated to be screened. As public health leaders, the focus is more on health promotion and disease prevention, and to accomplish this goal; the health care professional must be able to motivate the population of interest to take part of the campaign. Bernhardt (2014) stated, “When well-conceived, carefully implemented and sustained over time, public health communication programs have the capacity to elicit change among individuals and populations by raising awareness, increasing knowledge, shaping attitudes, and changing behaviors” (para 7). The leader must be able to motivate and convince his stakeholders before he or she can accomplish the campaign's