Disparities in diabetes between US-born and foreign-born population: using three diabetes indicators

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ABSTRACT We investigated disparities in diabetes between the US-born and foreign-born populations using three diabetes measures: diagnosed diabetes, undiagnosed diabetes, and total diabetes, either diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes. We analyzed adults aged 30–84 years drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2009–2018 (n = 21,390). Of cohorts in 2009–2018, foreign-born adults had significantly higher age-standardized prevalence of diagnosed (12.6% vs. 10.6%) and undiagnosed diabetes (4.5% vs. 2.6%), and total diabetes (17.1% vs. 13.2%) than US-born adults. Results from logistic and multinomial regressions adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, limited access to healthcare and BMI showed that the foreign-born had significantly higher odds of total diabetes (OR: 1.25, 95% CI: 1.04–1.50) and undiagnosed diabetes (OR: 1.83, 95% CI: 1.44–2.32) compared to the US-born. There was no significant difference in diagnosed diabetes by nativity (OR: 1.12, 95% CI: 0.96–1.53). Our results show that foreign-born adults were at higher risk of diabetes than US-born adults, and the difference by nativity was largely attributable to BMI and racial/ethnic composition. In addition, we demonstrated the importance of choosing measures of diabetes in studying diabetes mainly due to the foreign-born group’s high prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes, which biases the prevalence of diabetes downward when diagnosed diabetes is used.