The type 2 diabetes crisis, can history help us address it?

2013-03-20

University of Virginia. School of Medicine

We hear almost daily about the rapidly increasing rate of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. population. Many pronouncements are dire, proclaiming an "epidemic," and most make it sound as though this problem is relatively new-just three or four decades old. Yet almost 100 years ago a small group of U.S. health care professionals was already warning that diabetes was "a public health problem," fated to become worse if nothing was done soon. But what did they mean by this? Why had they grown concerned? And what measures did they recommend to try and reverse the upward trend in diabetes rates? In this Medical Center Hour, historian Arleen Tuchman asks what we can learn from history that might help us understand better how we are framing the diabetes "crisis" today, and why. How do cultural assumptions about diabetes, and about the particular populations believed to be most at risk, influence not only our understanding of this disease but also our efforts to gain control over it?

Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series

Tuchman, Arleen, 1956- (Speaker); Klein, Joan Echtenkamp (Moderator); University of Virginia. School of Medicine

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

Filmed lectures

Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 -- history

Medical Center Hour

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

English

The speakers in this presentation have given the University of Virginia permission to make it freely accessible online for all audiences to view. To request permission to reproduce, republish, and/or repost this presentation please contact the Historical Collections and Services Department of the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia.

1 online resource (1 video file, 58:53 min.) : sound, color

Local Identifier: u6081736