Dear Colleagues,
Yesterday the Health Inequalities Lead for One Wolverhampton ran a workshop with WVCA and Diabetes UK to look specifically at health inequalities related to diabetes. This took place at the Bob Jones Centre, Blakenhall.
Diabetes UK has a long history of research and in more recent years, working in communities. Some of the stark messages presented were as follows:
- People living in deprivation and from ethnic minority backgrounds have higher rates of many complications across all types of diabetes.
- A black or south Asian person living with type 1 diabetes is around twice as likely to develop kidney related complications which require dialysis or transplant because of diabetes related complications, than a white person living with diabetes
- 5% of people living with type 2 diabetes in pregnancy are from the most deprived areas versus 6.5% in the least deprived
Diabetes UK has committed to the following actions:
- Reducing gaps in health outcomes for people with and at risk of diabetes
- Ensuring that the research funded addresses inequality, and is supported by a diverse diabetes research community
- Building an understanding of inequality in diabetes and what to do about it
- Making services more accessible to people who do not currently access them
- Increasing the diversity of the people that influence and guide the work
- Building an inclusive and diverse organisation confidently tackling inequality
There is more information here:
Participants, which included our Social Prescribing Team, were invited to consider what would be needed to make impactful changes in narrowing the gap on health inequalities for diabetes. This could include, for example,
- Targeted education for younger people under 40 and ethnic cohorts
- Targeted social support groups and psychology
- Build on community exercise schemes
- Taking health services and education to communities
- Build on services for transition groups (19-25yrs) taking a wider partnership approach
- Quality Improvement Project against the national audit and 3 treatment targets and focus on young type 2 diabetes
There will be further updates on this work as it progresses. In the meantime, for information on Diabetes UK, the local contact is Shaleen Sandhu Shaleen.Sandhu@diabetes.org.uk
You can contact the Social Prescribing Team on 01902 328 987 or at SPinfo@wvca.org.uk.
Thank you.