New York, NY –
Adults in New York City are about 30 percent more likely to have diabetes than the national average. And a larger proportion of local diabetics aren’t even aware they have the illness. That’s according to a new Health Department study, one of the most ambitious ever conducted by a city. WNYC’s Fred Mogul has more.
Twelve-and-a-half percent of local adults are diabetic, compared with a little more than 9 percent nationally. Dr. Lorna Thorpe, the Health Department’s lead researcher, says the gap probably comes from the relatively high incidence of poverty in New York City, and the greater proportion of diabetes-susceptible groups such as blacks and Asians. About one-third of diabetics here had never been diagnosed.
The city’s survey was the first ever in which a city didn’t just ask people to report on their conditions but actually had researchers examining patients and taking blood samples. For WNYC, I’m Fred Mogul.
Fred Mogul has been covering healthcare and medicine for WNYC since 2002. His beat takes him to hospitals, community clinics, doctors offices, health agencies, public schools and research labs across the metropolitan area. His work has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, Time magazine and Philadelphia Inquirer, among others.
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