School of Public Health Dean Peter J. Levin (left) stands at East Campus with David Strogatz, director of the School's Prevention Research Center, which is studying community-based interventions for chronic disease prevention.

Preparing NYS Communities to Fight Diabetes

Since October of 2002, Professor Mary Gallant of UAlbany’s School of Public Health has been working with officials from the New York State Department of Health’s Diabetes Prevention and Control Program, interviewing residents in medically underserved urban and rural communities.

The team, along with the Greater Capital Region Community Coalition for Diabetes Prevention, is compiling a community-based needs assessment for locales in downtown Albany and Columbia-Greene counties in order to determine how communities support diabetes prevention/management and how the Coalition can enhance their efforts.

“Diabetes education programs are under great fiscal constraints,” said Catherine Marschilok, project manager of the Coalition and director of diabetes services for Northeast Health.

“Community outreach therefore can’t happen without the cooperation of other agencies, such as the University at Albany,” she said. “The Coalition brings to this project the knowledge of what people need to know about diabetes. The University supplies research expertise, staffing and a funding source, and the state health department’s technical advisory staff brings a knowledge of those communities the University wants to research as well as facts about the burden of chronic disease upon communities.”

The diabetes effort is the first undertaken by the School of Public Health since being designated a Prevention Research Center (PRC) by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), specifically to study community-based interventions for preventing chronic diseases.

“We recruit individuals with diabetes from the community to record their perceptions, find out what resources exist, how we can build upon them, and identify where new resources can be brought to bear,” said David Strogatz, director of PRC.
“Our students contribute and are benefited too. Some will participate in enhancing the learning environment about diabetes in these communities. Some will put together data-collection instruments to aid the study, others devise complementary projects for their research.”

The PRC’s overall mission is to develop diverse community partnerships to conduct studies showing innovative ways in which community resources such as households, schools and faith-based organizations can promote the health of community residents and reduce the burden of chronic disease.
The CDC funded 28 such centers in the U.S. in 2002. The School of Public Health carried strong credentials through its faculty expertise in community-based interventions and its close ties to the Department of Health. It was also particularly qualified to deal with diabetes as its initial mission.

Gallant, the diabetes project’s principal investigator, is an expert in health policy who received a separate CDC grant in 2002 to focus on self-management strategies for dealing with chronic arthritis. Akiko Hosler, an assistant professor in epidemiology as well as a Ph.D. graduate in sociology, has worked with DOH in forming community coalitions to aid those with diabetes. Strogatz himself worked on assessing social and environmental influences on diabetes prevention and management when a professor at the University of North Carolina.

Strogatz believes this diabetes study in the Capital Region will result in a template for community-level assessment that can be disseminated among many coalitions in the state. “Chronic disease is a particularly important public health concern in New York,” he said, pointing to a CDC report ranking New York fifth highest among states in the percentage of deaths attributed to the four leading categories of chronic disease, including diabetes.

“This is a step forward for our School of Public Health, but it is also a significant advance for all New Yorkers with chronic disease,” said the School’s dean, Peter J. Levin. “We are extremely excited to work closely with Capital Region communities, because collaboration with key groups and organizations is paramount to our work. This effort also broadens the University’s strengths in research and teaching, since students, faculty and health department professionals will be working side by side.”
Chronic diseases are the leading cause of death and disability in the U.S., with under-served populations, such as those in this diabetes project, bearing a disproportionately large burden. Yet these diseases are also among the most preventable.

“The goal of the Center is to work with diverse groups and balance principles of scientific rigor, community acceptance and practical application in order to find ways to improve the quality of life for Americans today and for future generations,” said Strogatz.