The Delta Regional Authority has partnered with Wal-Mart to provide free health screenings in impoverished Delta regions of eight states through March 2008.
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With statistics indicating that more than 225,000 of Arkansas’ 2.6 million residents are living with diabetes, two Arkansas diabetes programs are focused on regional diabetes education efforts.
Delta Diabetes Care
In Helena in southeast Arkansas, the Diabetes Education Clinic at the Delta Area Health Education Center (Delta AHEC) is “dedicated to becoming a leader in diabetes education in order to improve the quality of life for the citizens of the Delta,” stated a news release from Karan Cox, coordinator of the Diabetes Education Clinic and associate director of Delta AHEC.
Delta AHEC, a seven-county outreach of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), began the Diabetes Education Clinic in January 2003. The clinic is one of only two American Diabetes Association (ADA)-recognized programs in eastern Arkansas, though the prevalence of diabetes is higher in the eastern Delta counties than in other parts of the state.
The clinic works to “convert patients with uncontrolled diabetes in Phillips County ... into informed patients with good diabetes control” as defined by ADA standards, stated Cox’s news release. The clinic team takes a multidisciplinary approach, with a registered dietitian, advanced practice nurse, medical director, registered nurse, social worker, mental health professional and pharmacist all playing a role.
Although there are 36 ADA-recognized diabetes education programs throughout the state, the program at Delta AHEC faces unique challenges because of health problems facing the Delta region. A Harvard University study ranked Phillips County as one of the 10 worst in the United States in life expectancies of men and women. More than half of Phillips County adults are overweight or obese, and 98 percent of the Delta region is medically underserved. Research has shown that the Delta leads the nation in deaths from cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, unintentional injuries, chronic pulmonary disease, pneumonia, diabetes, suicide, STDs/HIV and homicide, Cox stated.
This fall, Delta AHEC received $534,128 from the Delta Regional Authority (DRA) for its diabetes education program.
The DRA, serving 240 counties in eight states in the Delta region, focuses on healthcare and a healthy work force, said Rex Nelson, alternate federal co-chairman of the DRA. “It’s a simple fact,” Nelson said. “We’ll never advance the Delta economically until we improve the work force.”
The funding for Delta AHEC is the DRA’s first, Nelson said, though the DRA is looking at providing grants for diabetes centers in other states.
As part of the DRA’s effort to improve the health of the work force, it implemented the Healthy Delta initiative, a diabetes education and prevention program. Its two primary goals are:
- To educate Delta residents on the symptoms and dangers of diabetes.
- To spur Delta residents to do something about their diabetes by calling Healthy Delta (1-866-602-3300) for more information and a referral.
The program’s Web site (www.healthydelta.com) has links to an online diabetes risk test as well as general information about diabetes.
Through the Healthy Delta program, people who call the center receive a follow-up call at the 60- and 90-day marks, Nelson said.
”When there are health issues that affect workers across a wide geographic area, the entire economy is affected,” DRA federal co-chairman Pete Johnson stated in a Sept. 28 column. “The Delta is unfortunately the unhealthiest part of the country. If the health of the work force here isn’t drastically improved, our region’s economy will never advance as far as it should.”
Statewide Initiatives
While the Delta AHEC and the DRA focus on the health of citizens in the Delta, the Arkansas Diabetes Program at UAMS works to improve diabetes education and care statewide.
Kathy Riordan, RN, a diabetes nurse educator who has been with the program since 1993, says the program provides updated medical education for healthcare providers throughout Arkansas, in addition to its work educating and helping individual patients.
For example, a medical case study prepared by Riordan — along with Drs. Debra Simmons and Zulekha Hamid, and registered dietitian Jan Wall, a diabetes nutrition specialist who is the program coordinator — was recently distributed to Arkansas physicians. The study of a 58-year-old Caucasian man whose physician was “not completely satisfied with the control they had achieved over his diabetes,” began using a newer drug, Symlin, under the care of the Arkansas Diabetes Program team.
“The case study was to give an example of how to use (the drug) effectively with comparisons to similar types of medicine,” Riordan said, noting that use of the drug — an injected amino acid protein hormone — is a fairly different way of treating diabetes. For individual patient care, the ADA-certified Arkansas Diabetes Program requires a medical referral for patients.
Riordan explained that they often see patients whose primary care physicians feel are not making enough progress or patients who require other therapy, such as insulin pumps, that family physicians may not have the resources to provide. Riordan said, “Through diabetes education, we work one-to-one with the patient to help them with learning information to be most effective with their therapy.”
Of the 225,000 to 235,000 Arkansans estimated to have diabetes, only about 150,000 have been diagnosed, according to a report called The State of Diabetes in Arkansas, published in 2005 by the Arkansas Diabetes Prevention and Control Program and the Arkansas Department of Health.
The report states that diabetes, which saw a 35 percent increase in Arkansas from 1993 to 2002, “has reached epidemic proportions” in the state.
November 2007
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