Battling Diabetes With Diet and Exercise
Prevention and intensive management are the keys to stopping the epidemic
Even though most insurers may balk at covering prevention, some employers with an eye on their healthcare bottom line are stepping up to the plate. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 23 percent of companies that provided health insurance benefits offered gym membership discounts or had on-site exercise facilities. Fifteen percent offered weight management programs and 14 percent offered classes in nutrition or healthy living. (The foundation is unrelated to Kaiser Permanente.) Employees at food giant General Mills in Minneapolis, for example, can take healthy cooking classes and participate in "Fun Friday" fitness events, among other things. At Pitney Bowes, the mail and document management technology company based in Stamford, Conn., the 6 percent of employees who have diabetes get free blood pressure and cholesterol drugs and pay just 10 percent coinsurance for diabetes drugs. That's in addition to comprehensive nutrition and exercise programs for all employees.
There is no magic bullet that will win the war on diabetes. Researchers, employers, community advocates, insurers, and, yes, gastric bypass surgeons, all have a role to play. But those efforts will be stymied if average people don't take prevention to heart. Focus groups show that people don't think diabetes is a serious problem on the level of cancer or AIDS, says Larry Hausner, CEO of the ADA. To change that, the association is launching a public education campaign in November, timed to coincide with National Diabetes Awareness Month. Advocates point to the antismoking campaigns that began in the 1960s as a model that shows that public health outreach can have a significant impact on people's behavior. They also note, however, that it took years for those campaigns to have an effect.
Last year, 1.6 million adults were diagnosed with diabetes, or more than 4,000 each day. The clock is ticking.
advertisement
