Diabetes is an epidemic in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 34 million Americans have diabetes and face its devastating consequences. What’s true nationwide is also true in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s diabetes epidemic:
- Approximately 1,147,490 people in Pennsylvania, or 11.1% of the adult population, have diagnosed diabetes.
- An additional 303,000 people in Pennsylvania have diabetes but don’t know it, greatly increasing their health risk.
- There are 3,484,000 people in Pennsylvania, 34.1% of the adult population, who have prediabetes with blood glucose levels that are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.
- Every year an estimated 89,719 people in Pennsylvania are diagnosed with diabetes.
Diabetes is expensive:
People with diabetes have medical expenses approximately 2.3 times higher than those who do not have diabetes.
- Total direct medical expenses for diagnosed diabetes in Pennsylvania were estimated at $9.3 billion in 2017.
- In addition, another $3.5 billion was spent on indirect costs from lost productivity due to diabetes.
Improving lives, preventing diabetes and finding a cure:
In 2021, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health invested $148,507,390 in diabetes-related research projects in Pennsylvania.
The Division of Diabetes Translation at the CDC provided $3,240,970 in diabetes prevention and educational grants in Pennsylvania in 2018.
https://diabetes.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/ADV_2021_State_Fact_sheets_Pennsylvania_rev.pdf