Institute of Public Health

Multigenerational African American Families Diabetes Education Initiative

Funded by Aetna, this is a collaborative research project with the GSU Gerontology Institute, Grady Memorial Hospital, Project Healthy Grandparents, and Clark Atlanta University.  The goal is to inform older African Americans with Type 2 diabetes and their family members about the role of nutrition in diabetes for the purpose of improving older adults’ adherence to diabetes nutrition protocols and preventing diabetes among younger family members.  Objectives include to: raise awareness among multigenerational African American families about the importance of nutrition in diabetes management; empower grandparents with Type 2 diabetes to serve as positive health role models for their families; track multigenerational African American families’ eating habits for one week; have grandparents with diabetes  conduct daily glucose level self-tests during the one week nutrition tracking period; conduct an HbA1c glucose level test 3 months following the trainings; evaluate findings from the pre- and post-test questionnaires, the break-out groups, and the nutrition tracking; and, make recommendations to diabetes health care providers for a family-systems approach to diabetes management.  Institute faculty member Ike Okosun provides statistical expertise, supervises data collection, data management and analysis process, and assists or leads preparation of manuscripts for publication.