Celebrating successes during Diabetes Week

The annual Diabetes UK campaign this year started on Monday, June 8, and provides an opportunity for people to raise awareness of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes has been one of the key priorities for ARC EM, with many studies part of the CLAHRC legacy themes preventing chronic disease and managing chronic disease.

Here are some highlights from the diabetes studies and projects we have been working on:

Babysteps

A digital way of finding out more about reducing the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes in the future for women who were diagnosed with gestational diabetes during one or more pregnancies.

A Safer Ramadan 

Each year the Leicester Diabetes Centre train and support local volunteers in Leicester City and Leicestershire to be A Safer Ramadan Community Champion. This enables them to help those with Type 2 diabetes in their family or community to manage their diabetes well during Ramadan. 

Education material is also available on our website during this time. Later this year we will work with our current Champions and recruit more for Ramadan 2021.

Type 2 diabetes and insulin videos 

These videos were produced by the Leicester Diabetes Centre and the Centre for BME Health. The videos explain the different types of diabetes, what blood sugar is and how insulin works. The video is available to download in six languages; English, Urdu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi and Bengali. The videos are useful to explain Type 2 diabetes to those who have been newly diagnosed, and their families.

Diabetes Risk Score

The Leicester Practice Risk Score is recommended by NICE and used by Diabetes UK for the identification of those at risk of diabetes. The score identifies people who may be at high risk of diabetes or currently have undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes using data on age, sex, BMI, ethnicity, family history of diabetes and anti-hypertensive use. 

Working with our partners at the Centre for BME Health, we translated the Leicester Diabetes Risk Score into difference languages, including Bengali, Gujarati and Panjabi, to help members of the South Asian community assess their risk of developing the condition. 

The Urdu version will be releasing soon on the ARC EM website.