Better Together: A Patient-centered Approach to Improve Diabetes Among Immigrant Communities

South Asians and Africans are growing immigrant groups at high risk for diabetes in the US. South Asian (SA) (ancestry originating from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other parts of South Asia) and Sub-Saharan African immigrant groups make up two of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the US. SAs have higher rates of T2D and cardiovascular disease than whites. Furthermore, SAs without diabetes have a high prevalence of T2D risk factors.

Sub-Saharan African-born immigrants (the proposed study will focus on West African (WA) countries: those originating from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo), whose population in the US has doubled every decade since 1980, are also at high risk for T2D. Dietary patterns of African immigrants are high in carbohydrates and animal protein, compared to African populations who did not immigrate.

These findings in SA and African immigrant communities challenge the well-accepted "healthy immigrant effect" phenomenon (that immigrants are on average healthier than native-born persons), suggesting that more tailored T2D prevention and management strategies are greatly needed to narrow the disparities in outcomes between these and other US populations. Previous trials showed that intensive lifestyle interventions (ILIs), group-based programs designed to promote weight loss through a combination of diet, activity, and behavior change, decrease T2D incidence in people with prediabetes and reduced complications among people with T2D. Additional analyses have shown that the effects of lifestyle interventions are long-lasting, even when participants gain back some of the weight lost during the program.

Family and social networks could be an important factor to improve patient activation, especially for South Asian and African immigrant men. Social networks, defined as someone with social or family ties to an individual, affect health through myriad mechanisms including social support, social influence, social engagement, and access to resources. This study aims to focus on SA and WA immigrant men as model populations to examine preferences, feasibility, and acceptability for a shared medical appointment (SMA) intervention based in primary care and developed with user-driven input and changes in healthy lifestyle practices among participants' social networks. This will be a pre-post pilot study of a 16-week lifestyle program for the mentioned immigrant groups with prediabetes or diabetes in Atlanta. Patients will participate in health-professional-led group visits every other week focused on improving dietary and exercise practices to reduce weight. Groups will be followed at baseline, 4 months and 12 months. For Aim 2, the study team will assess intervention spillover effects among participant's self-identified social networks. The study team will ask participants in Aim 1 to name 5 people in their social networks to participate in a survey of health behaviors at baseline and 12-months to assess health behavior practices.