Diabetes: Seeing a Global Epidemic Through the Eyes of a Medical Anthropologist

If diabetes were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world.That’s right—there are about 463 million people globally who have diabetes, and only a very small percentage of those people are actually successfully treated and not impacted by comorbidities. When examining this problem, are we considering all contributing factors?

Tune in to learn:

·        What ‘social vulnerability’ means in the context of health and other inequalities
·        How diabetes is negatively impacting healthcare systems on a global scale
·        How technologies like AI can aid in the understanding of complex biological, social, geographical, and cultural factors impacting health and equality around the world

David Napier is a professor of medical anthropology at University College London, where he also serves as the director of the Center for Applied Global Citizenship, and the Science, Medicine, and Society Network. For the past eight years, he has been an academic lead for a program called Cities Changing Diabetes, which aims to research and limit type 2 diabetes in cities around the world.

“By constructing this [diabetes] as a purely biomedical problem, we’re failing to address what the key drivers of this are, and we’re failing, therefore, to develop responses to that disease that will help us to reduce where it’s going in the next 45 years,” says Napier. Despite clear evidence of the significance of sociocultural drivers, there is a surprising lack of scientific publication on them.

Napier discusses the ins and outs of this global problem, the details of his efforts to address it, and what’s to come in the near future.

Press play to hear the full conversation and check out citieschangingdiabetes.com/ to learn more.

Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/30PvU9C