DIABETES
This risk of black Americans being diagnosed with diabetes is higher than any other race in the US. This indicates that diabetes precursors in African-Americans may be more frequent than whites. The racial differences in the prevalence of diabetes are not evident, but all behavioral, environmental, socioeconomic, and physiological contributors were postulated. The complications related to diabetes include amputations secondary to poor self-management of diabetes, stroke, lower extremity, renal final stage disease, and hypertension (Cohen, 2011). Growing the awareness of healthcare professionals, patients, and Africans regarding effective diabetic self-management involves reviewing evidence-based findings to enhance the effectiveness of diabetes education in their community in an attempt to minimize diabetes-related complications. It is important to draw on natural connections and foundations for communal support, such as the churches for African-Americans in designing a good medical program to serve African Americans with diabetes.
African-Americans (Markens, 2012), stated that the Church became a key body from the days of segregation to the 1950s and 1960s civil rights struggle until the urban organization of the 1990s. The churches for African Americans in the US also offer a variety of recovery and intervention services that enable their congregations to improve their physical and psychological well-being (Blank, 2015). So self-management programs for church-based diabetes can really be effective. A lifestyle like food choice and culture have a major influence on diabetes self-management behavior (Gould, 2011). The barriers to self-management of diabetes-related with African Americans in particular include lack of healthy eating, problem-solving, physical activities, monitoring, healthy managing, and minimizing the risk of diabetes.
It is essential to make healthy choices for food, understand portion dimensions, and learn the best times to eat. Training for diabetes self-management will help the patients and people to learn about the consequence of foods on blood glucose, carbohydrate, and sources of fat, suitable dietary planning, and food resources (Surwit, 2002). Learning, preparation of meals, gauging portion to control the fats being consumed will be taught as well. Obstacles, such as emotional, financial, and cultural factors and environmental triggers will also be dealt with.
Physical activities enhance fitness for the overall body. For weight management and blood glucose control, regular activity is important. Diabetes can improve glycemic control at suitable levels of exercise. Active body mass index can also be improved, weight loss improved, lipid control and blood pressure helped and stress reduced (Hill-Briggs, 2016). This program will teach patients with diabetes to work together on barriers to physical, environmental, mental, and time constraints. This will also develop an adequate plan for activities to balance food and drugs with the level of activity.
Diabetes-related knowledge about how diet, physical activity, and medications affect the blood glucose levels can be provided by a routine blood glucose self-monitoring process. However, their monitoring process doesn’t stop here as diabetes patients ought to monitor blood pressure and weight on a daily basis (Whelton, Kotchen, (2015). Education and training on self-management diabetes will teach the patients the choice, selection, timing, and frequency of testing, target values, interpretation, and utilization of results. As medication is a progressive treatment for Diabetes. The medical experts will decide what medications the patients can take, and help them understand, based on the form of the individual medication needed. The medical experts can show how insulin is injected or how pills for diabetes work and when it is taken. The levels of blood glucose can be reduced by effective drug therapies and the risk of diabetes complications, in combination with the choice of a healthy lifestyle, and also lead to clinical benefits (Knight, 2016). The aim is to ensure patients are aware of all drugs, including action, adverse reactions, efficacy, toxicity, dosage prescriptions, adequate timing and dosage speed, effects of missing doses, storage instructions, and safety guidelines.
Psychological and social factors affect health and quality of life. Psychological distress has a direct impact on health and influences the motivation of a person to control their diabetes. If motivation is diminished, it is difficult to maintain the commitments needed for effective self-care. If the obstacles become insurmountable, the actions can not reflect good motives alone. Coping with diabetes is challenging and the self-management capacity of a diabetic deteriorates (McWilliams, 2014). A key part of the program will be to identify the motivation for behavioral changes, then help to establish achieve compartmental targets and guide the patient through several observations. This can encourage patients and support them to discuss their worries and anxieties and help them to learn how they are able to control and how to cope with the disease.
Positive risk mitigation practices such as avoiding smoking, daily inspections of the nose, foot and dental hygiene minimize and improve safety and quality of life. An important part of self-care is to get a variety of preventive services to understand, look for, and regularly obtain them. The program will teach diabetes patients to learn about care standards, therapeutic objectives, and preventive care to reduce the risks of diabetes.