Diabetes Wellness and Prevention Program
ParamCARE Foundation, in partnership with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Community Health Promotion program conducted the first session of the Diabetes Wellness and Prevention Program for South Asians on 17th April, 2014 at the Robert Wood Johnson Fitness and Wellness Center in Parlin, NJ. This program with series of classes and workshops has been organized to educate the South Asian Community with Diabetes or Pre diabetes on how to manage Nutrition, Physical Activity, Medications, and also on ways to lead a healthy and productive life with diabetes. A group of 17 people with either history of diabetes or pre diabetes were recruited to participate in the program.
As part of the first session, the participants were educated on Causes, Types, Symptoms, Complications and the role of exercise in managing diabetes. They were also provided free glucose monitors, test strips, were taught on how to use them and maintain a blood glucose log. The entire event proceedings were translated to Gujarati with the help of an interpreter for the benefit of the non-English speaking population.
All education materials related to management of diabetes were translated to Gujarati and were distributed to the participants. The participants enthusiastically participated in the discussion and showed a lot of interest in attending events like this in the future as well.
The future sessions are designed to include the other aspects of diabetes management such as: meal planning, carbohydrate counting, estimating portion sizes, live cooking demonstrations, medications, prevention and management of complications, and management of blood sugar imbalances.
We would like to thank RWJUH Community Health Promotions program for partnering with us and the media for covering this event, and also helping us spread awareness not only about Diabetes, but also about occurrence of such events in the community.
ParamCARE Foundation is very proud to be conducting events like this to raise awareness in the community especially in a linguistically and culturally appropriate manner.