Racial Differences in Long-Term Self-Monitoring Practice Among Newly Drug-Treated Diabetes Patients in an HMO

Abstract

Adherence to glucose self-monitoring standards was low, particularly among blacks, and racial differences in self-monitoring persisted within a health system providing equal access to services for diabetes patients. Early and continued emphasis on adherence among black diabetics may be necessary to reduce racial differences in long-term glucose self-monitoring.

Medication Adherence and Racial Differences in A1C Control

“…Selfmonitoring activity was measured as the average number of blood glucose test strips dispensed per month. As described in our previous work (8), dispensed test strips were distributed evenly over the days between dispensing (or over 60 days after the dispensing date if no subsequent dispensing occurred within that period). The covariate included in the models was the average number of test strips dispensed per month during the 3-month period before each laboratory assessed A1C value.…”

Self-reported Neighborhood Safety and Nonadherence to Treatment Regimens Among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

“…aspects of an individual's social and environmental life context that fall outside of the health care setting-may contribute to perpetuating health disparities. 1,[6][7][8][9][10] Given the widely-reported associations between contextual influences, particularly neighborhood characteristics 6,[11][12][13] , and health behaviors in general, it is plausible that unfavorable contextual influences promote poor diabetes outcomes by creating barriers to patient adherence to diabetes selfmanagement regimens.…”

Self-management as a mediator of the relationship between social support and health outcomes of African American adults with type 2 diabetes.

“…Ethnic backgrounds sometimes affect dietary adherence in persons with T2D (Trinacty et al, 2007). Patients from different ethnic backgrounds differ in their perceptions of the difficulty of self-management practices, acceptance of the disease, and glycemic control (Trinacty et al, 2007).…”

“…Patients from different ethnic backgrounds differ in their perceptions of the difficulty of self-management practices, acceptance of the disease, and glycemic control (Trinacty et al, 2007). Hispanic participants felt restricted by diabetes dietary regimens more than any other ethnic group (Misra & Lager, 2009).…”

“…African Americans are less likely to adhere to their diabetes medications than non-Hispanic Whites (Osborn et al, 2011). In addition, adherence to glucose monitoring standards is low among African Americans (Trinacty et al, 2007).…”