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February 20, 2003

UPMC launches diabetes awareness campaign

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) last month rolled out a public health education and awareness campaign on diabetes in western Pennsylvania.

“Diabetes is a devastating disease, affecting some 17 million Americans, with an estimated 183,000, including some 60,000 who don’t even know it, in western Pennsylvania,” said Linda Siminerio, director of the University of Pittsburgh Diabetes Institute. “We must identify those with the disease and help them to manage it successfully.”

People with diabetes are susceptible to a wide range of complications, including heart disease, stroke, neuropathy, amputations, blindness and kidney disease. Type 2 diabetes, once considered a disease of aging, is for the first time being seen in young adults and even teenagers, and the incidence of diabetes among people in their 30s has jumped 70 percent in the last 10 years. Some estimates report that diabetes costs the nation $54 billion annually in work loss, disability and premature deaths.

But research conducted at Pitt and elsewhere has established that people with diabetes can avoid or postpone the development of complications by controlling their blood sugar levels, and that at least some people at high risk for diabetes can avoid or postpone onset of the disease.

The goals of UPMC’s Focus on Diabetes are to make the general public more aware of diabetes, its risk factors and its complications; to help at-risk individuals avoid getting diabetes by encouraging a more active lifestyle and more sensible eating; to identify people who may have diabetes and not know it and to get them into treatment, and to help people with diabetes and the physicians who care for them to manage the disease to minimize the risk of complications.

Major components of the initiative include:

• A board-mandated action plan by each of UPMC’s community hospitals.

• A UPMC diabetes awareness campaign, made possible by an educational grant by Eli Lilly, that will include informational on-air messages, screenings and printed materials.

• Promotion of diabetes self-management education efforts throughout western Pennsylvania through a series of screenings and programs.

• An initiative by the Institute for Performance Improvement of UPMC Community Medicine and University of Pittsburgh Physicians that will communicate standards of care to more than 400 primary care physicians and monitor physician performance against those standards.

• A diabetes management and education initiative for UPMC Health Plan members.

• Participation in Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative worksite-based diabetes initiative involving 12 corporations, including UPMC.


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