Featuring medical experts from around the world, GMA will join with the University of Guam to address healthcare disparities among Pacific Islanders and other minority Americans.
Nearly 5 million people live in U.S. territories, which include Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The reality of healthcare disparity is that hospital patients in the U.S. territories, including the Guam Memorial Hospital, experience higher death rates from pneumonia, heart failure, and heart attacks.
According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine earlier this year, when compared to stateside hospitals, territorial hospitals had about two additional deaths for every 100 heart attack patients, one additional death for every 100 heart failure patients, and three additional deaths for every 100 pneumonia patients. In all three diseases, uncontrolled diabetes can be a negative factor.
Guam is considered a medically underserved area by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Diabetes, smoking, diabetic kidney disease and childhood obesity are too common among our island people. Guam and the neighboring Pacific Islands have some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and gestational diabetes in the world.
Rather than wait for a solution, local physicians have initiated cooperative efforts with international health experts to bring the best solutions to Guam.
The first Pacific Region Medical Conference will convene this week on Oct. 21 to 23 at Hyatt Regency Guam, and will focus on healthcare disparities in the Pacific Islands. The conference will provide medical education and training, create a framework for shared healthcare dialogue, disseminate the latest healthcare advances and issues, and promote regional professional networking.
Local physician leader Saied Safabakash, MD, has worked tirelessly to organize this world-class medical gathering. Dr. Safabakash, a kidney dialysis expert at the Guam Memorial Hospital, will present a report on the management of chronic kidney disease in our community.
Father Duenas Memorial High School graduate Ravi Thadhani, MD, will lead an important discussion about problem pregnancies and Preeclampsia in disadvantaged populations. Dr. Thadhani is the Director of Clinical Research in Nephrology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Thadhani is also the course director for “Introduction to Clinical Research” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The keynote speaker will be William C. Knowler, MD, Dr.PH, from the National institute of Health, who will speak about race/ethnic differences in the incidence and prevention of Diabetes.
Knowler is the chief of the Diabetes Epidemiology and Clinical Research Section of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Dr. Knowler has primary responsibility for diabetes research at the National Institutes of Health.
For more than 30 years, Dr. Knowler has led the effort to combat diabetes in American Indians, the population with the highest known rates of type 2 diabetes in the world. Just like Pacific Island peoples, American Indians have suffered devastating rates of blindness, kidney failure and cardiovascular death due to diabetes.
Dr. Knowler and his colleagues have been successful at garnering large federal grants to fund research that could reduce suffering caused by uncontrolled diabetes among the Pima Indians of Arizona. Through his groundbreaking work on disease prevention, Dr. Knowler has demonstrated how efforts to help minority members of society can help the greater population as a whole.
Reporting in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, Knowler and the members of the Diabetes Prevention Program confirmed scientifically the benefits of lifestyle intervention. Just as most doctors were already ordering, Knowler showed that modest weight loss and increased physical activity resulted in a dramatically reduced risk – by 58 percent — of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus.
About half of the nearly 4,000 DPP participants were from minority groups such as the Southwest American Indians with whom Knowler had been working since 1975. Knowler’s research continues to show that the treatment of diabetes is a shared responsibility. The patients must take an active part in controlling their weight and staying physically active. The doctors must continue to seek the best, evidenced-based solutions to the $130 billion annual problem that is diabetes in America.
DR. VINCE AKIMOTO
Upper Tumon, Guam
