Working with the YMCA to Implement the Diabetes Prevention Program

Type 2 diabetes is common and burdensome. Its risk factors include unhealthful eating, physical inactivity, and obesity, which spare no segment of the population and threaten the health and economic well-being of the entire U.S. society. If left unchecked, one in three children born today are expected to develop diabetes in their lifetimes. The solution is already known, but reversing the decline in healthy lifestyle behaviors and increases in obesity will require profound individual commitment, social will, and environmental change. Although policy solutions hold promise, changes in the social, cultural, and physical environment take time, and these more fundamental solutions may prove insufficient for addressing the imminent risk of diabetes for tens of millions of Americans already living with prediabetes today. Those individuals need programs immediately that provide education, counseling, problem-solving, and ongoing support for more healthful lifestyle behaviors in the midst of an existing environment that makes physical activity and healthy eating difficult and costly. Part of a special issue on Advancing the Science and Practice of Diabetes Prevention. [Copyright American Journal of Preventive Medicine; published by Elsevier Inc.]