Baltimore?s African-American Leadership Summit will tackle the issue of growing rates of diabetes among the city?s black population at its conference Wednesday.
The event, hosted by the American Diabetes Association and sponsored by Care Improvement Plus, will focus on the impact of the disease on the city and possible solutions.
Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions nationwide, according to the American Diabetes Association. The incidence among blacks almost doubles that of white Americans, while serious complications, like limb amputations, are seven times more likely than in white patients. In Maryland, 9.5 percent of blacks have diabetes, as opposed to 6 percent of whites.
Diabetes is a disease in which blood-sugar levels are above normal. Most of the food we eat is turned into glucose, or sugar, for our bodies to use for energy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Either the body can?t produce enough of the hormone insulin, which helps sugar get absorbed out of the blood, or the body doesn?t use insulin well, stranding sugar in the blood stream.
Health complications include heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and lower-extremity amputations. Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.
Maryland Sen. Gloria Lawlah; Dr. Wallace Johnson; council member of the American Diabetes Association, and Dr. T. Alafia Samuels, from Care Improvement Plus, will speak at the conference.
The African-American Leadership Summit
» The Diabetes Epidemic will be held from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture, 830 E. Pratt St.
