Results of the U.S.–Mexico Border Diabetes Prevention and Control Project have been published in a special issue of the Pan American Journal of Public Health, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). PAHO is the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization. The border diabetes project is the first research effort to treat the border as a single epidemiological unit. It is a binational research effort coordinated by PAHO in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the ministry of health of Mexico, the Paso del Norte Health Foundation, and the California Endowment.
Among some key findings of the project are:
- For every three people diagnosed with diabetes along the U.S.–Mexico border, a fourth person has the condition but doesn’t know it.
- Diabetes is inversely related to education and socioeconomic levels.
- Nearly 48 percent of diabetes sufferers have high blood pressure, but only one in four is receiving treatment for it.
- About 61 percent of diagnosed diabetes sufferers in the border area have at least one other family member with the disease, confirming family history as an important risk factor.
- Obesity appears to be a key factor in high rates of diabetes in the border area; more than one-third of border inhabitants are obese, and obese people are, in general, 2.5 times more likely to have diabetes than those of normal weight.
Researchers note that counties and municipalities on both sides of the border share more environmental, cultural and behavioral similarities with one another than they do with their own respective countries.
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