Diabetes Education Program for Latinos

Latinos comprise 20% of Florida's 18 million residents and over 22% of the population of Hillsborough County. As Latino immigrants become assimilated, their lifestyles, food choices and health related behaviors change, resulting in increased incidence of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. In Hillsborough County, Fundación Familia Sana established a diabetes health education program which provides culturally appropriate education classes in Spanish on primary, secondary and tertiary prevention to Latino participants in a group setting. The program was family-based, with classes held in participant's homes, community centers or churches. Participants in this program attended four 2-3-hour diabetes education classes over a four week period focused on prevention, coping with and managing diabetes and treatment of the disease. Participants were administered pre- and post-tests assessing overall knowledge of diabetes prior to and upon completion of the program. A total of 153Latinos over age 18, enrolled in the study. One hundred eighteen (77%) participants graduated from the program, noted by attendance in all four classes and completion of both a pretest and posttest. The mean total score for the pretest was 62.03% and the mean total score for the posttest was 94.7%. A paired sampled t-test revealed an overall statistically significant difference in the pretest final scores and the posttest final scores, t(117)= 22.540, 95% CI, 29.83.-35.57. Findings indicate that participants increased their overall knowledge of diabetes. In addition, the family-based, predominantly in-home, intervention model was widely accepted by participants and minimized recruitment and retention barriers commonly experienced by multisession interventions.