263768 Primary Prevention of Type II Diabetes in Urban Native American/Alaska Native Girls and Young Women

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sarah Rosenberg, MPH Candidate 2013 , Department of Health Education, San Francisco State University, San Francisco
Type II diabetes is an important and troubling problem for urban Native American and Alaska Native (NA/AN) people, and this disease, once considered “adult-onset diabetes,” is affecting people at increasingly younger ages and at higher prevalence in women than in men. In addition, historical U.S. colonization policies deeply altered tribal social structures and caused a mass migration of NA/ANs to urban areas. This paper will review the literature on the social, political, and historical origins of type II diabetes in urban NA/AN young women at each level of the Social Ecological Model (intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, and institutional), and it will propose primary prevention interventions that draw from Liberation Education, Stages of Change, and Social Support theories. These interventions aim to target not only the lifestyles, but also the surrounding environments of NA/AN young people in order to effectively prevent the onset of type II diabetes.

Learning Areas:
Chronic disease management and prevention
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
1. Analyze the causes of type II diabetes morbidity—beyond explanations that focus mainly on individual health and genetic predisposition—that include social, economic, and cultural oppression. 2. Compare primary prevention interventions that move beyond efforts that only focus on individual behavior, and involve improving the built environment and social cohesion to achieve prevention of the onset of type II diabetes and other positive outcomes.

Keywords: Diabetes, Native Americans

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a student and candidate for the Master of Public Health in Community Health Education at San Francisco State University (expected May, 2013). I have over three years of experience in public health research and knowledge dissemination on best practices for youth development programs, and my future career goals are to work more directly to improve health equity and build capacity, especially with marginalized populations such as racial/ethnic minorities and foreign-born people.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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