Schools
The University Of Utah: Building Diabetes Awareness
November is National Diabetes Awareness Month, but for people living with the disease, there is no month, week, day or even hour when th ...
Angie Fagerlin
Nov 29, 2021
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November is National Diabetes Awareness Month, but for people living with the disease, there is no month, week, day or even hour when they are not fully aware of diabetes. For most, it will last the rest of their lives and has no cure. The disease affects how a body turns food into energy and requires multiple daily decisions regarding diet, exercise, medication and blood glucose monitoring.
The Driving Out Diabetes Initiative (DODI) at the University of Utah is designed to help people better manage diabetes or lower the risk of developing diabetes. Almost one in 10 adults in Utah have been diagnosed with diabetes, and likely twice that have prediabetes. The Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation generously donated funding to launch DODI on November 13, 2017. Since then, we have successfully developed and launched innovative programs that have reached more than 128,000 lives. In each of the four years, DODI has made a greater impact upon the health of Utahns than in the year before.
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Our Fourth Year
The initiative was a powerful ally for the state this past year—thanks in part to the Miller Foundation’s willingness to deploy the Wellness Bus alongside Utah public health officials to provide COVID-19 testing. More than 15,000 tests were administered throughout the most underserved areas of the Salt Lake Valley; 32 percent of those tested did not speak English as their first language and the majority were uninsured. While helping the state face the unprecedented public health crisis, we never lost sight of our true mission: providing diabetes education and screening.
In our fourth year, online school programs we developed taught more than 90,000 students how to develop healthy habits. Health coaching programs guided more than 2,000 people to implement and customize lifestyle changes that have been shown to last.
Research funding for diabetes at U of U Health Challenge Grant Historic Breakthrough
This press release was produced by The University of Utah. The views expressed here are the author’s own.