Low-income minorities
Access to diabetes is not only a challenge in developing countries, but can be just as much of an issue in the developed world. Some groups of people, due to ethnic background and genetic predisposition, experience a higher incidence of diabetes; some may also experience inequities in access to care. The Novo Nordisk Low-Income Minorities Programme (LIM) works to address these gaps in diabetes care. The aim is to identify specific obstacles for access to diabetes care and how to overcome these obstacles in targeted subgroups of a given population. The subgroup can be of ethnic origin, belong to a different religion or culture, be in a low-income group, or belong to a certain age group.
Performance 2006
In 2006 Novo Nordisk’s initiatives to better serve the needs of low-income minority populations included:
- Two dialogue sessions in Edinburgh, one with government social service employees and local NGOs and the other with primary care teams. The sessions aimed to identify barriers to care for low-income minorities in cooperation with partners from academic and healthcare communities.
- A workshop in Los Angeles, in collaboration with the University of California at Irvine, on addressing access to care for Hispanics and Mexicans. The workshop was attended by about 25 people with special knowledge of treatment of diabetes in Hispanics and Mexicans.
- A workshop on the diabetes care gap for low-income minorities, which ran at the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) congress in Cape Town in December 2006.
- A booklet detailing case studies of best practice in diabetes care for low-income minorities, which was produced by Novo Nordisk and launched at the IDF Congress in Cape Town. The case studies have been gathered over the past two years from North America and Europe.
Plans are ongoing to address the findings from LIM in selected countries starting in 2007. The emphasis will be to work with the primary care sector to achieve better care for low-income minorities.
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