Latino Diabetes Initiative Essay

Latino Diabetes Initiative and It’s Success
The Latinos Diabetes Initiative is a successful program that was launched in July 2002 by the Joselin Diabetes Center. This center is dedicated to defeating diabetes in all forms—as it is one of the global leaders in diabetes research, care, and education. Their goal is to prevent and cure diabetes for future or current patients. They are an independent, non-profit institution affiliated with Harvard’ Medical school, one of the best in the nations. The main focus though for the Latinos Diabetes Initiative is that they are aimed to give affected (with diabetes) and non-affected Hispanics improved lives with culturally oriented patient care, education, outreach, and research (source). The number of

Latinos patients seen in Boston was 843. There were 5,000 in the affiliated centers in Texas and Philadelphia. The total number of visits in Boston was about 13,139. There were more than 6000 Patients who went for patient education. Support groups: more than 200 visited. Baile y Salud, which is a salsa dancing program, about 42 patients participated over the 7 sessions they had.

The total number of people who participated in Supermarket tours were roughly around 50. Though, the numbers seem to be a small amount out of the 56.6 million Hispanics in the United States, the nation’s largest ethnic or racial minority, but it is still a difference maker.
How is it Successful and Culturally Competent?
The Hispanic community have a unique culture and traditional beliefs. For instance, Hispanics will cook unhealthy foods that contain high fats and salt. These foods can include carne asada, tamales, etc. Hispanic main dishes don’t have much leafy greens; mostly fats, salts, and carbs. This disease appears in mostly adults, but there is a rise in metabolic abnormalities that may affect many children and adolescents. The strong genetic disposition, the inadequate meal planning, and the lack of physical activity is the many of the reasons why 17 percent of all Latinos in the United States have diabetes. Nevertheless, this program can help improve the lives of the Hispanic community for current and future generations to come. Many Hispanics are not aware of this chronic condition and it is their mission for them to help understand with

educational materials, activities, etc. One of the main elements that make the Latinos Diabetes Initiative successful is how cultural competent they are. One of the things that they do is implement cultural activities. They have a bicultural, bilingual team provides the highest level of diabetes care in a cultural, linguistically, oriented manner. There is a variety of activities that they do to teach and reach out for the participants. One of which is going to the Supermarket and learning the nutrition of foods and the best way to eat healthy. For example, they can learn how to read the Nutrition Facts label to see how much sodium or fats a certain food has. This is an effective way for Hispanics to learn to properly have a healthy eating and cooking lifestyle. In the Hispanic community, normally they don’t do physical activity. This program has an activity for people to get moving by dancing salsa, which is popular in Latin American countries and the Hispanic communities. It is a great way for these people to be active while they enjoy the beat and rhythm of their music. The educational material that they present is useful and a efficient way for Hispanics to learn about what it is like to live with diabetes. They came up with a Spanish audio novella about a woman by the name of Rosa, who has diabetes. Her story presents her story on nutrition, physical activity, the glucose testing, and the medications that is prescribed for her. This gives the people who are listening to the audio an insight on how their life could be like also if they had diabetes, or for the ones who do have it, it depicts how they can do better to not have complications.
Latinas Contra Cancer and Its Success
As cancer being the leading cause of death in Hispanics, the reasons are due to the fact is that they lack the education on how to prevent, check oneself, etc. Fortunately, there are a variety of programs that can help low income Hispanics. One of which is Latinos Contra Cancer in the Santa Clara county in California. The Latinas Contra Cancer or LCC for short, was founded to address awareness about the devastating disease of cancer in the Latino community, increase access to quality care, working to decrease mortality rates and improving the quality of the healthcare experience. It has been successful and achieved many things such as educating thousands of Latinos about their cancer risk, helped get hundreds receive expensive cancer screenings, and gained recognition from scientist and community based agencies.
How is it Successful and Culturally Competent?
The reason as to why they are successful is that they are four main categories of programs that they prioritize for it to work.

Prevention and outreach, detection and screen, research, and lastly, patient support. In prevention and outreach, they educate the Latino/Hispanic community by being culturally competent. They know every little statistic and history on the health aspect of the Latino community and it is their mission to help them in any way possible with these programs that they offer. There is a traditional game that Hispanics love to play and that is the lotteria also known as bingo in English. They do this activity called Health Bingo and this is a fun and educational tool that has taught these Hispanics the varieties of cancer as well as promoting healthy eating, exercise and early screenings. Another program is detection and screening. Research studies show that Latinos are diagnose with cancer when it is at a later stage and the turnout for this is that the survival rates are lower. The reason of this result is the minimal education on how to self-exam oneself and how costly screenings can be, especially if they don’t have health insurance. It is proven that Latina women are less likely to perform breast examinations, obtain a mammogram, and are less likely to seek medical care when they suspect something is wrong. In the United States, for Hispanics, it is said that they are three times more likely to not have health insurance. There are a variety of reason

as to why not. First, most Hispanics are not able to afford it due to them at the most part, work in low wage/income occupations. The great thing about this program is that Latinas Contra Cancer educates the Latino community about how important early detection and screening and they do this through a variety of options like community events and partnerships with local organizations. Not only that, but they work with those who are struggling financially or for those who don’t have health insurance. The LCC works to provide the access of the expensive diagnostic services for them.
Conclusion
Future more, these programs are trying to reduce these health disparities among the Latino/Hispanic community. Being culturally competent is important and it is an effective way to start whether if it’s salsa dancing to increase physical activity or bingo but with information about cancer, it has been successful and hopefully other programs out there can gain knowledge about this.