The Impact of Race, Geographic Location, and Time on the Prevalence of Diabetes

1. What is the outcome of interest?

The outcome of interest for my epidemiology project is the prevalence of diabetes in a national population (United States), and how factors such as race, geographic location, and time, have an impact on the outcome.

2. Briefly define and describe your outcome. You may want to do a bit of research on some of the characteristics of your outcome. For example, what is diabetes? Or, how do we define cases of HIV, and what are some of the health implications?

Diabetes is a disease in which blood sugar (or glucose) levels are above what they should be in a normal person. Through various biological processes, our body turns carbohydrates into glucose, or sugar, for our body to then use as energy. The pancreas, an organ that lies near the stomach, makes a hormone called insulin to help glucose get into the cells of our bodies. With diabetes, your body either doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use its own insulin as well as it should. This causes sugar to build up in your blood (Basics about Diabetes, 2012). While there are three different types of diabetes (diabetes type 1, diabetes type 2, and gestational diabetes) men and women can develop diabetes at any age.

Type 1 diabetes, which used to be called juvenile diabetes, usually develops in young people; but, type 1 diabetes can also develop in adults. In type 1 diabetes, your body no longer makes insulin or enough insulin because the body’s immune system, and other harmful substances, attacked and destroyed the cells that make insulin (Basics about Diabetes, 2012).

Type 2 diabetes, which used to be called “adult-onset diabetes”, can affect people at any age, even children. However, type 2 diabetes develops most often in middle-aged and older people. People who are overweight and inactive are also more likely to develop it. In type 2 diabetes, fat, muscle, and liver cells do not use insulin to carry glucose into the body’s cells to use for energy—a term denoted as insulin resistance. While the pancreas initially keeps up with the added demand by making more insulin, over time, the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin when blood sugar levels increase (Diabetes Fact Sheet, 2011).Gestational diabetes can develop when a woman is pregnant. Pregnant women make hormones that can lead to insulin resistance. All women have insulin resistance late in their pregnancy. If the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin during pregnancy, a woman develops gestational diabetes.