Sense of urgency needed to combat 'invisible disease’ of diabetes

NEW ORLEANS — Diabetes is a misunderstood and largely ignored health epidemic, one that threatens to grow larger and claim more lives around the world, Desmond Schatz, MD, said during a presentation at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions.

“A patient dies every 6 seconds from diabetes and its consequences, and it is projected that 1 in 10 will live with diabetes by the year 2040, with health care expenses over the next 2 decades expected to exceed 7 trillion dollars,” Schatz, president of medicine and science for the ADA, said during his address.

Schatz, who is also associate director of the Clinical Research Center in the department of pediatrics at the University of Florida, said advocacy for diabetes must be turned up to 212 degrees — the boiling point of water — to create a “scalding sense of urgency” to transition the disease to a highly-visible crisis that “threatens the very fabric and resources of our society.”

According to Schatz, “diabetes is the global warming of health care: another calamity that has conspicuously been ignored while HIV/AIDS and the Zika virus and other diseases and epidemics grab the spotlight. Patients have a right to demand a fiery sense of urgency of now.”

The reality, he said, is that health care providers are largely invisible to patients, who often manage a very complex disease on their own.

“How many type 2 [diabetes] patients choose to be invisible to us, largely because of their own sense of failure and frustration they confront during an office visit?” Schatz said. “It’s easy to criticize and cajole these patients in the hopes of improving their clinical profiles, but how often do we actually take the time to hear or learn about their burden, and the real reasons they why can’t seem to control their disease?

“Diabetes is like a wildfire, raging through this country and across the globe, but is anybody really paying attention?” Schatz said. “Every year we hear similar statistics, yet the disease and the related skyrocketing health care costs seem invisible to the governments of the world.”

The general public, too, remain in the dark about diabetes, Schatz said, typically perceiving cancer and heart disease to be far more serious than diabetes.

“The vast majority of the public polled feel that people with diabetes have themselves to blame, and know very little about the disease,” Schatz said.

Citing NIH funding data, Schatz noted a disparity in funding between diabetes research and funding for cancer and HIV/AIDS: $34.71 per person spent on diabetes research, vs. more than $2,500 per person for HIV/AIDS research.

“What can we, the diabetes community, learn from the HIV/AIDS movement?” Schatz said. “The origin began with an army of advocates who created a sense of urgency and achieved transformational change in a few decades.”

Advocates must do more than talk, he said. They must make demands, for better treatments, better reimbursement policies, and an end to discrimination in both schools and work places, while also demanding more education and support from multidisciplinary teams, and create an awareness campaign to help make the disease of diabetes a visible one.

“We need to push that urgency button by asking the bigger and more personally confrontational questions, like, why aren’t we further along? Why have we not yet found a cure? Is there something more that we need to be doing?” Schatz said. “We need to think outside the box. We need to better share our data and remove the barriers to collaboration ... the single biggest component of innovation.

“Each of us should ask ourselves: What have we done today, and what will we do tomorrow to act up, to speak out and to demand action?” Schatz said. – by Regina Schaffer

Reference:

Schatz D. Diabetes at 212 Degrees — Confronting the Invisible Disease. Presented at: American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions; June 10-14, 2016; New Orleans.

Disclosure: Schatz reports being president of medicine and science for ADA.