News & Research

    University of Southern California, Davis, Los Angeles, California

Secondary Analysis of Latino Diabetes Hospital to Home Transition Data

General Research Subject: Both Type 1 And Type 2 Diabetes

Focus: Foot Care, Foot Care\Lower Extremities

Type of Grant: ADA-APMA Fellowship

Project Start Date: September 1, 2012

Project End Date: August 31, 2014

Research Description

According to national statistics, 7% of our nation's population suffers from diabetes, the fifth leading cause of death, costing more than $132 billion annually. Minorities are disproportionately affected by diabetes, with Latinos nearly twice as likely to have diabetes as whites. Latinos with diabetes are significantly more at risk for complications due to diabetes and hospital readmission, and clinicians' knowledge of the language and culture of their patients directly impacts communication and adherence to treatment recommendations. Transitioning out of the hospital to a community setting poses an additional risk for poor health outcomes among older adults, particularly among Latinos with diabetes.

Latinos age 50 and older, hospitalized due to a diabetes-related illness/condition will receive a transitions coach intervention provided by a diabetes trained care manager from a Latino bilingual, bicultural background. While many previous studies on transition programs have focused on providing care for diabetic or older adult patients, this project provides a unique approach in that it utilizes a bilingual/ bicultural care manager trained in diabetes education to improve transitions and patient and family disease self-management skills. Family dynamics, tradition, communication, and culturally inappropriate models of health management have been attributed to the poor success of personal disease control among Latinos with Diabetes. A culturally competent, bilingual Transitions Coach can eliminate barriers in language and communication to promote patients' treatment adherence. In addition, this project aims to improve patient and family health knowledge by providing a home-based intervention, where the Transitions Coach will work with the entire family unit.

Mentor: Susan Enguidanos, PhD   Fellow: Janelle Green, DPM

Research Profile

What area of diabetes research does your project cover?  What role will this particular project play in preventing, treating and/or curing diabetes?

This projects aims to identify self-care and diabetes knowledge needs of Latino diabetics transitioning from hospital to home. By understanding gaps in both diabetes education and self-management skills, programs and services can be developed to provide education, training, and support to better meet these needs.

If a person with diabetes were to ask you how your project will help them in the future, how would you respond?

Information we learn in this study may help us understand better ways of supporting Latino diabetics manage their diabetes at times when they experience a diabetic-related health crisis that results in a hospitalization. Our study is trying to understand what type of diabetes-related education, information, and training needs Latino diabetics may have following discharge from the hospital. While this study is focusing primarily on Latinos with diabetes, information we learn here may help other minorities and non-minorities with diabetes.

Why is it important for you, personally, to become involved in diabetes research?  What role will this award play in your research efforts?

Minorities experience disproportionate poorer health outcomes as compared with white populations.  This is particularly true among Latinos with diabetes.  Understanding methods to overcome these health disparities is a primary focus of my research.  I aim to better inform the practice and research communities on needs of Latino diabetics as well as on models of education and care that work and don’t work.  Furthermore, this award will allow me to investigate these factors as well as provide training and mentoring to a new researcher, furthering the research capacity in the field of diabetes.

In what direction do you see the future of diabetes research going?

With rapidly increasing numbers of older adults, particularly minority older adults, there will be increasing need to develop and test new methods of education, care and training for diverse populations with and at-risk for diabetes. Thus understanding factors associated with minority prevention, treatment, and self-management of diabetes is a critical research need.