Diabetes should be focus of healthcare professionals year-round

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT There are many pharmacy retailers hooking their diabetes-related initiatives into the awareness generated by American Diabetes Month, but judging by a new study recently issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it may be time for healthcare professionals to begin piecing together initiatives that will help maintain that heightened awareness over the course of an entire year.

(THE NEWS: Supervalu encourages healthy lifestyles with diabetes program. For the full story, click here)

That study, published in Population Health Metrics, projected that newly diagnosed cases of diabetes incidence will increase from the eight cases per 1,000 people diagnosed in 2008 to about 15 cases per 1,000 people in 2050. That alone suggests more people will be in need of year-round nutrition programs, such as Supervalu’s “living healthy with my diabetes.” But if those projected increases in diabetes incidence are coupled with a decline in diabetes-related mortality rates, the CDC suggested that as many as 1-in-3 Americans will have diabetes by 2050, as compared with the 1-in-5 Americans who have diabetes today.