Local Diabetes Awareness Day events on Saturday, November 12
If diabetes were a country (350 million people) – it would be the world’s third largest.
In the United States alone, 86 million Americans have pre-diabetes, 29 million more already diagnosed with diabetes.
Monday, October 14 is World Diabetes Day, but locally, a Diabetes Awareness Day will precede the global event on Saturday, November 12. At three locations on that Saturday – Hy-Vee in Windom, Sunshine Foods in Jackson and Wal-Mart in Worthington – events will be held to educate shoppers about the different aspects of either preventing Type 2 diabetes, or managing Type 2 diabetes.
Shoppers will be asked to complete a pre-diabetes risk assessment. In addition, they will receive a “passport” for which they will collect stamps from various booths around each respective store that promote active active living, healthy eating, and diabetes management. If they receive all the stamps from the booths – and complete a brief post-survey on what they learned on if the event was beneficial or not – they will then be eligible to win a FitBit. A FitBit is a physical activity tracker designed to help you become more active, eat a more well-rounded diet, sleep better and ultimately, turn you into a healthier human being. The FitBit tracks much of your physical activity and integrates with software that encourages you to be more and more active.
Proactive on this issue is Community Wellness Partners (CWP)of Des Moines Valley Health and Human Services and Nobles County Community Services. CWP addresses health prevention initiatives within Cottonwood, Jackson and Nobles Counties. CWP is a new name that will identify the work formerly attributed to the Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP) and new grant opportunities that public health received through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that focus on healthy eating, physical activity, diabetes prevention, collaborating with health systems to improve clinical quality measures, and connecting the community to available resources.
The CWP team is working throughout Cottonwood, Jackson and Nobles Counties to build partnerships to prevent and better manage obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke, with a primary focus on eliminating health disparities, or the social factors and conditions that create difference in health conditions. The work of CWP is being done in communities, work places, health care organizations and schools, while focusing on healthy eating, active living and tobacco-free living.
For this specific health topic, the CDC has awarded Cottonwood, Jackson and Nobles Counties with a Community Wellness Grant (CWG), and one of its strategies (or goals) is to increase awareness of pre-diabetes, especially in at-risk populations. Those most at-risk of developing Type 2 diabetes have the opportunity to participate in an “I Can Prevent Diabetes” to reverse their risk of developing diabetes. Promotion of such classes has been occurring in Worthington, a city with a priority population, and CWP is now looking to expand into Cottonwood and Jackson Counties through awareness events such as this.
The numbers of those with diabetes – and pre-diabetes – are already and high, and are steadily increasing on today’s society. To that end, the disease is definitely a health issue being brought to the forefront.
