Translating and piloting a community based diabetes prevention intervention for Vietnamese-Americans

Abstract

<p>Session presented on Friday, September 26, 2014:</p> <p>Diabetes is a serious chronic medical condition that has well-established links to devastating health outcomes including heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease. A large multicenter randomized clinical control trial (n=3,234) called the Diabetes Prevention Program has demonstrated that a lifestyle intervention focused on modest weight loss through dietary changes and increased physical activity can reduce the development of diabetes by 58%. However efforts to translate these findings to understudied and underserved minority populations, such as Vietnamese Americans, are lacking. Work in this area is important because the diets and cultural norms among Vietnamese Americans are vastly different from the general population, and are distinctly different from other Asian American sub-groups. Moreover, many older Vietnamese American adults are largely monolingual and socially isolated from mainstream society. According to the literature review conducted for this study, there are no current Diabetes Prevention Program translations for Vietnamese Americans. Furthermore, the purpose of this project is to: (1) translate the Diabetes Prevention Program for cultural and linguistic relevance to the Vietnamese American community, and (2) test the feasibility &amp; acceptability of the translated Diabetes Prevention Program among a sample of Vietnamese Americans at high risk for diabetes. Moreover, based on the literature review a Community Based Participatory Research model will be used to facilitate the success of this project and hopefully increase the chances of success at preventing DM in this population since this model has been shown to be effective in minority populations. This project is on-going. We plan to present results of our efforts towards building a Vietnamese American Advisory Board, and our work towards translating the Diabetes Prevention Program. Some preliminary findings include a lack of existing resources to implement the Diabetes Prevention Program. For example, reliable resources to help participants track calorie and fat content of ethnic food (i.e. Pho). Ongoing collaboration with a nutritionist will be vital to address this barrier.</p>