title: Diabetes among refugee populations: what newly arriving refugees can learn from resettled Cambodians.
abstract: A growing body of literature suggests that cardiometabolic disease generally and type 2 diabetes specifically are problems among refugee groups. This paper reviews rates of cardiometabolic disease and type 2 diabetes among refugees and highlights their unique risk factors including history of malnutrition, psychiatric disorders, psychiatric medications, lifestyle changes toward urbanization and industrialization, social isolation, and a poor profile on the social determinants of health. Promising interventions are presented for preventing and treating diabetes in these groups. Such interventions emphasize well-coordinated medical and mental health care delivered by cross-cultural and multidisciplinary teams including community health workers that are well integrated into the community. Finally, recommendations for service, policy, and research are made. The authors draw on local data and clinical experience of our collective work with Cambodian American refugees whose 30-year trajectory illustrates the consequences of ignoring diabetes and its risk factors in more recent, and soon to be arriving, refugee cohorts.
authors.affiliation: University of Connecticut Health Center, MC3910, 263 Farmington Ave., Farmington, CT, 06030, USA, juwagner@uchc.edu.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: S Megan
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Berthold
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Buckley
authors.forename: Sengly
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.forename: Theanvy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kuoch
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Scully
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People; D003863:Depression; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D012036:Refugees; D012307:Risk Factors; D013312:Stress, Physiological