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Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Diabetes is disproportionately rural; in last 2 decades rates have declined across U.S., except in the the rural South

Mortality rates from diabetes have improved in most of the country over the past 20 years, but have remained almost unchanged in the rural South, according to a newly published study from the School of Public Health at Texas A&M University.

As the seventh-highest cause of death in the nation, diabetes continues to be a significant health challenge in the U.S. "Rural Healthy People 2020," a decade-long report of rural health goals published by the university, identifies diabetes as the third most important public health issue in rural areas, where diagnosis rates can be as much as 17 percent higher than in cities and suburbs. As of 2015, 30 million Americans have diabetes and another 84 million were pre-diabetic, Rae Lynn Mitchell reports for Texas A&M's health news publication.

The study's lead researcher, Assistant Professor Timothy Callaghan, told Mitchell that diabetes is most likely more common in rural areas because of a lack of education about it, different training for health-care professionals, and/or lack of access to care. He cautioned that the study does not establish cause and effect.

The research studied publicly available data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1999 to 2016.

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