Prediabetes in America’s Youth

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Prediabetes in America’s Youth

This paper focuses on a CNN news article by Holcombe that was published on March 28, 2022. The article focuses on prediabetes among American children. It is titled “Prediabetes has more than doubled among American children. Here’s how to reduce your kids’ risk.” Based on this, title its clear the news article was published due to the dramatic increase in prediabetes among American kids. This article primarily focuses on how prediabetes risks among children in the United States can be reduced and help them from developing type two diabetes mellitus, which results from prediabetes worse conditions such as higher blood sugar levels. Basing my argument from the news article, the lack of a healthy lifestyle among children significantly contributes to the high increase of prediabetes among youths in United America. The author further indicates that obesity and prediabetes contribute to type 2 diabetes among adults, which is led by worsening conditions such as high blood sugar levels that develop from adolescence.

The connection drawn between the news article topic and classroom concepts and theories is that they are closely related. Having learned about obesity in class have realized that there is a close relationship with prediabetes. This is because an obese individual (kid) is likely to develop prediabetes signs because obesity leads to excessive accumulation of unnecessary amounts of fat in the body that affects major substances like cytokines, glycerol, and hormones, among others involved in the development of insulin resistance. And as a result, insulin resistance has impaired β-cell function, which contributes to the development of prediabetes. However, despite the author indicating that the rise of prediabetes cases has been seen over all subpopulations, it is a major health inequity based on ethnicity, level of education, and income. This is because, in the United States’ health history, some members from racial and ethnic groups associated with low socioeconomic status die from prediabetes and diabetes.

I believe that the news article is sociologically informed since the other has already used a sociological lens on prediabetes. This is because the author denotes another clinical researcher who stated, “The increase of prediabetes was seen over almost all subpopulations of young Americans, regardless of income, ethnicity, and education.” This indicates that the author does not associate prediabetes with children from particular racial groups based on income, ethnicity, or education. But generally, prediabetes is an issue among all American adolescents since it has significantly increased from 11.6% to 28.2%. And is due to this dramatic increase, the author provides ways in which parents and caregivers should reduce and prevent their children from developing prediabetes. Since it is indicated that “If we do not intervene, the children who have prediabetes have a higher risk of developing diabetes and also have a higher risk of all cardiovascular diseases.” Therefore, it is the responsibility of all parents and guardians to engage their children in physical exercises or activities, getting them away from screens since today’s generation has been addicted to media, modeling healthy eating, and incorporating healthy additions to their meals to prevent unhealthy foods.

As a sociologist, I base/support my argument on the fundamental cause of disease theory which attempts to provide a resolution for social inequalities in healthcare, especially in America, where the incident has lasted over decades. Social inequities in health across the United States have been a major issue that has contributed to the significant mortality rate in the United States for children suffering from prediabetes and diabetes cases. According to the sociologic circle of prediabetes/diabetes, it is an issue affecting society. This issue has dramatically increased in America because of discrimination in the health sector based on race, ethnicity, income, and education level. Control Disease Center in the United States indicates that prediabetes/diabetes in America is prevalent among people from a particular ethnicity, especially non-whites with low socioeconomic and lower education levels (Lawrence et al., 2021). These have been identified as major causes of prediabetes among adolescents because their parents lack good or healthy meals for their children and lack appropriate knowledge that children need to be engaged in physical activities rather than remaining indoors, even if they lack expensive gadgets to use. And due to these, the author provides some things that parents and caregivers should do to reduce the prevalence of prediabetes among children as a way of sharing knowledge based on health tips to improve their children’s health. Therefore, social inequalities in health I found it accountable for the increased prediabetes among children in the United States (Sheehan et al., 2022).

References

Holcombe, M. (2022, March 28). Prediabetes has more than doubled among American children. here’s how to reduce your kids’ risk. CNN. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/28/health/prediabetes-children-study-wellness/index.htmlLawrence, J. M., Divers, J., Isom, S., Saydah, S., Imperatore, G., Pihoker, C., … & SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study Group. (2021). Trends in prevalence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents in the US, 2001-2017. JAMA, 326(8), 717-727.

Sheehan, C. M., Gotlieb, E. E., Ayers, S. L., Tong, D., Oesterle, S., Vega-López, S., … & Shaibi, G. Q. (2022). Neighborhood Conditions and Type 2 Diabetes Risk among Latino Adolescents with Obesity in Phoenix. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(13), 7920.