Pharmacists at 25 Rite Aid stores in greater Cleveland are offering diabetes control programs, as a part of UnitedHealth Group's community-based diabetes management and prevention initiative.
Rite Aids are providing the diabetes management programs to residents with UnitedHealthcare's employer-sponsored insurance, and the service is also being offered to other health plans.
A UnitedHealth Group press release say it is estimated that 800,000 adults in greater Cleveland have diabetes, and that about 200,000 have gone undiagnosed, many of them thought to be lower-income and under-insured residents.
The Minnesota-based company created the Diabetes Prevention and Control Alliance in 2010 to address the enormous growth of type 2 diabetes. The chronic disease will cost an estiamted $500 billion annually by 2020, with 50 percent of the U.S. population being diabetic, if current trends continue, according research by UnitedHealth Group's Center for Health Reform & Modernization.
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Initiatives like UnitedHealth's are trying in some way to stem that tide, and also address the related problem of obesity, by helping patients learn if they are prediabetic and help them make diet, exercise, lifestyle and medical changes as way to prevent the chronic disease.
"By broadening its reach in the Cleveland area, Rite Aid is helping more people who must deal with diabetes every day learn how to take control of the disease, make healthy lifestyle changes and improve their health," Deneen Vojta, MD, UnitedHealth Group senior VP, said.
The management programs includes consultation and community-based wellness activities. UnitedHealth Group is also bringing the diabetes management program to greater Las Vegas, in a partnership with the YMCA and the pharmacies of Kroger and Safeway supermarkets.
The rise of diabetes has become a huge drain on the healthcare system, and an estimated 79 million Americans, about 35 percent of adults, have prediabetes. In a broad effort to help prevent all of those people from developing the chronic disease, America's Health Insurance Plans and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have started the National Diabetes Prevention Program.