SINAI Urban Health Institute
National Institutes of Health awards SUHI $1MM for "North Lawndale Diabetes Community Action Project"
Monday, 16 November 2009 03:00
National Institutes of Health awards SUHI $1MM for “North Lawndale Diabetes Community Action Project.”
Principal Investigators: Joseph West and Steven Whitman
Project begins November 2009.
The North Lawndale Diabetes Community Action Project builds on community strengths to increase the early detection of diabetes and involves an entire neighborhood in efforts to enhance self-management by those with the disease. Our community-academic partnership proposes a neighborhood engagement approach to ameliorating the impact of diabetes on the lives of 10,000 adults living in a well-defined section of the North Lawndale neighborhood.
The Sinai Urban Health Institute, Sinai Health Systems, Rush University Medical Center and a community based organization (Family Focus North Lawndale) are proposing to develop and deliver a multilevel community intervention using a media campaign, community engagement, and individual self management training by "Diabetes Block Captains." Neighborhood residents working as Diabetes Block
Captains will conduct household screenings for diabetes and then will engage their neighbors in activities that promote diabetes self-management. This Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach seeks to support residents in hanging the culture within the target community, to make diabetes a neighborhood priority, and to address the cultural and social environment to support healthier lifestyles.
It is estimated that the direct medical care costs per person per year with diabetes is 2.3 times higher than for the person without diabetes.
OVERALL PURPOSE To reduce the impact of type 2 diabetes mellitus on the health of residents of North Lawndale through a replicable multi-level strategy developed and implemented through a collaboration between the community and an academic health center.