A Strategic Approach to Advancing Health Equity for Priority Populations with or at Risk for Diabetes - Alaska is a frontier state with a sparse population that faces unusual healthcare needs, disparities, and reduced access to care due to a variety of challenges such as geography, weather, and transportation. Many of these challenges are not experienced in states that have large urban communities connected by roads, trains and other means of ground transportation. Eighteen percent of the state’s population lives in communities with fewer than 2,500 residents. Looking at our prediabetes diagnoses, diabetes diagnoses, and years of potential life lost, there appear to be significant gaps in outcomes between populations, likely due in part to differences in healthcare seeking behaviors and access to primary care providers. Currently, our Diabetes Prevention Programs (DPP) and Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support (DSMES) programs are not reaching the populations with the highest diabetes burdens at appropriate rates. For example, men had more than double the years of potential life lost due to diabetes compared to women, but men only make up 15% of DPP participants and 27% of DSMES participants. We will work to reduce these gaps by targeting our strategies towards men and our most minoritized racial groups. For this reason, the CDPHP proposals attached will focus heavily on bridging these gaps through both expanded access as well as cultural tailoring, community liaison work, and equipping the diabetes care workforce to identify and address SDOH needs within their communities. The proposed strategies and activities for the prevention and management of diabetes are described within the narrative in further detail. For Evidence-based Approaches to Diabetes Management, CDPHP has selected Strategy 1. For Evidence-based Approaches to Type 2 Diabetes Prevention and Risk Reduction, CDPHP has selected Strategies 5, 7 and 8. For Policy & Systems-level Support for Diabetes Management and/or Type 2 Diabetes Prevention, CDPHP has selected Strategies 10 and 13. It is our goal to use increased cultural tailoring, diversity of access methods, cultural liaison collaboration and SDOH resources and tools to address these identified gaps and decrease the burden of obesity, prediabetes and diabetes within all populations in the State of Alaska.
