Top 10 Cities with the Greatest Disparity in Adult Diabetes

According to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, diabetes affects an estimated 29.1 million people in the United States and is the seventh leading cause of death.To help bring awareness to diabetes and health disparities, Pittsburgh-based OnlyBoth Inc. used source data from the CDC’s 500 Cities: Local Data for Better Health, a project focusing on 27 chronic disease measures related to unhealthy behaviors, health outcomes, and the use of preventive services. Then, via its benchmarking engine benchmine.com, OnlyBoth released the top 10 list of Cities with Greatest Disparity in Adult Diabetes. Disparity refers to a higher burden of illness, injury, disability, or mortality experienced by one group relative to another.“Health plans and health systems are looking at social determinants of health [SDoH] to improve member health outcomes and reduce costs,” says Raul Valdes-Perez, co-founder and CEO, OnlyBoth, which assesses and compares healthcare providers or populations. Recently, CMS announced that, effective in 2019, Medicare Advantage plans can offer members benefits that address SDoH. Medicare Advantage members may be covered for services such as adult day care, meal delivery, transportation, and home environmental services that relate to chronic illnesses.Related: The Global Rise of DiabetesRecently, Geisinger identified a top health issue in their community, assessed factors that could be contributing to the bad outcomes, and implemented a program that addressed them. The issue they tackled? Type 2 diabetes. “Although the health system mentioned above did not use Benchmine.com, other health systems and payers can identify and evaluate social determinants in their communities by using comparative-analytics engines, one of which was recognized as a finalist for the Healthiest Communities Data Challenge.,” Valdes-Perez says.“Unusually large neighborhood disparities in a health condition may suggest that localized, neighborhood interventions may be an effective approach in such cases,” he says.Here are the top 10 cities with greatest disparity in adult diabetes in order of least to most disparities in diabetes, according to the report: