Newswise — NEW YORK, March 3, 2020 – The Online First edition of the upcoming April issue of The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, features an article on Health People’s new diabetes report, “Wasted Billions, Wasted Health.” (https://tinyurl.com/r4mcgrz)
The article highlights Health People’s approach to reducing “costly complications from the disease and prevent[ing] or delay[ing] the onset of type 2 diabetes in people at risk” in the South Bronx as being a big achievement in effectively engaging low-income people in evidence-based diabetes education. Health People entirely trains South Bronx residents, themselves, to facilitate the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-endorsed National Diabetes Prevention Program (NDPP) and the Diabetes Self-Management Program (DSMP). Both programs have years of evaluation that prove such education programs reduce disease and lower healthcare costs.
In “Wasted Billions, Wasted Health,” Health People takes its experience to create a roadmap for New York State---which currently has a $4 billion Medicaid deficit---to achieve massive savings in its Medicaid program even while improving outcomes for Type 2 diabetes.
“Diabetes is by far the major disease that drives Medicaid costs across the nation. We hope this report will serve as a guide to help states and localities understand that they can make much more progress than they think if only they will regard communities, themselves, as real assets in the fight against diabetes,” said Chris Norwood, Executive Director of Health People and author of “Wasted Billions.”
Her organization’s peer educators have enrolled nearly 2,000 Medicaid patients with type 2 diabetes in the program.
A special program in which formerly homeless peer educators provided the self-management program in homeless shelters reduced the emergency room visits of participants by 45%, according to evaluation by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Health.
For a copy of the full report, visit Health People’s Newswise newsroom at: /institutions/newsroom/19933.
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About Health People
Health People is a groundbreaking peer education, prevention and support organization in the South Bronx whose mission is to train and empower residents of communities overwhelmed by chronic disease and AIDS to become leaders and educators in effectively preventing ill health, hospitalization and unnecessary death.
Established in 1990 as a women’s AIDS prevention and support program, Health People has grown, using its peer-education model, to provide a full range of HIV/AIDS services for men, women and families. It also has conducted community asthma programs, New York’s first diabetes peer-educators program, and a community smoking cessation program. Health People’s Junior Peer program, Kids-Helping-Kids includes teens who are mentors for younger children with sick or missing parents.
For more information, please visit www.healthpeople.org.
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