Increasing Adherence to the Diabetes Regimen: An Occupational Therapy Perspective

Abstract

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.