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Recognizing the epidemic of diabetes in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control projected that as many as one third of the population will have diabetes by 2050, without a concerted effort to change the lifestyles and habits of people diagnosed with diabetes. 1 Further, the World Health Organization (2014) announced that diabetes had become a global epidemic. Occupational therapy has been described as a rehabilitation profession that helps a person with disease to improve their ability to function in everyday life activities or to adapt to their environmental demands, in order to continue to function to the best of their abilities.2 The majority of occupational therapists in the United States have focused their interventions and research studies on development of the most effective ways to treat the tertiary complications of the disease such as: peripheral neuropathy, retinopathy, cardiac disease, cerebral vascular accident, and amputation.
Keywords: Cultural sensitivity; Cultural competence; Health education
Article History st Received: February 21st, 2014 Recognizing the epidemic of diabetes in the United States, the Centers for Disease th Accepted: February 24th, 2014 th Control projected that as many as one third of the population will have diabetes by 2050, Published: February 28 , 2014 without a concerted effort to change the lifestyles and habits of people diagnosed with dia- betes.1 Further, the World Health Organization (2014) announced that diabetes had become a Citation global epidemic.
Piven EF. Increasing Adherence to the Diabetes Regimen: An Occupa- tional Therapy Perspective. Diabe- Occupational therapy has been described as a rehabilitation profession that helps a tes Res Open J . 2014; 1(1): e1-e2. person with disease to improve their ability to function in everyday life activities or to adapt doi: 10.17140/DROJ-1-e001 to their environmental demands, in order to continue to function to the best of their abilities. The majority of occupational therapists in the United States have focused their interventions and research studies on development of the most effective ways to treat the tertiary compli- cations of the disease such as: peripheral neuropathy, retinopathy, cardiac disease, cerebral vascular accident, and amputation. The consequences of poorly controlled or uncontrolled diabetes have devastated the health of people with diabetes by providing them with shorter life spans, poor quality of life, further disability, and increased morbidity.3 Having been told of their potential for debilitation, many people with diabetes may not have been able to understand and visualize their dismal futures, or had deliberately chosen not to make the necessary lifestyle changes that could maintain their quality of life for as long as possible. In addition, older adults, non-native English speakers, racial and ethnic groups with health disparities, and those with health problems have lower levels of health literacy that has led to higher morbidity and severe health risks, when compared to the normal popula- tion.4 Some occupational therapists researched intervention approaches that targeted sec- 5-10 ondary prevention and demonstrated improvement in diabetes adherence behaviors.5-10 These studies provided individual and group interventions designed for Mexican-Americans with type 2 diabetes mellitus who were adherent to the recommendations for self-care from their physicians, health educators and nurses. The aim of these research studies was to provide culturally-sensitive and meaningful activity-based self-care interventions that motivated life- style changes that were sustainable over time.
Most health practitioners have studied issues of cultural-competency and have re- ceived training towards this end, so that their work with people from cultures other than their Copyright own could be more effective. Please notice that this author used the words cultural sensitivity ©2014 Piven EF. This is an open access article distributed under the in place of the more popular term of cultural competency. This was to imply that health pro- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 fessionals may not truly become competent, unless they have immersed themselves and lived International License (CC BY 4.0), as part of the culture that they want to understand. So, cultural-competency is the ultimate which permits unrestricted use, end goal. The means to that end would be everything that the practitioner would do towards distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original achieving awareness and sensitivity to the needs of the person or people that they work with, work is properly cited. and to modify their approach to health education accordingly.
DIABETES RESEARCH ISSN 2379-6375 http://dx.doi.org/10.17140/DROJ-1-e001 Open Journal For this reason, the Diabetes Research-Open Journal will feature research articles that have focused on secondary preven- tion of diabetes complications for subjects of any age and any type of diabetes, and provided health education interventions that were culturally-sensitive to the needs of the population or individuals studied. This would include the gamut of research from single case or single-subject research, through the highest level studies with double-blind placebo controlled trials.