Abstract
‘You get the quickest and the cheapest stuff you can’: Food security issues among low-‐income earners living with diabetes
Highlights
Background Diabetes prevalence is increasing worldwideMore than 800,000 Australians live with diabetes, and there are stark inequities in prevalence and clinical outcomes among Indigenous people and low socio-‐economic groups
In this study, low-‐income earners living with diabetes faced food security issues
This paper explores food security issues faced by low-‐income earners living with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) as part of a broader investigation of the impact of socio-‐economic disadvantage on the experience of diabetes
Summary
Background Diabetes prevalence is increasing worldwideMore than 800,000 Australians live with diabetes, and there are stark inequities in prevalence and clinical outcomes among Indigenous people and low socio-‐economic groups. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a disease marked by high glucose levels resulting from the body’s ineffective use of insulin It is the most common type of diabetes – experienced by 90% of people with diabetes worldwide – and it affects mostly people 50 years or over, it is increasingly being diagnosed in children and young people.[1,2] Following a worldwide trend,[3] the prevalence of diabetes is increasing in Australia: an estimated 818,200 Australians, or 4% of the population, had been diagnosed with diabetes in 2007–08;4 this represents three times the proportion of 1989–90.2 the burden of disease of T2D is not distributed: there are stark inequalities in diabetes occurrence and clinical outcomes among Indigenous people,[2,5] and people in low socio-‐economic groups, immigrant communities, and people living in remote and very remote areas are more susceptible to developing diabetes and having poorer clinical outcomes than the general population.[2, 6]. There are no significant differences in the availability, quality and prices of healthy foods between high-‐ and low-‐income areas,[11] research has highlighted the issue of relative affordability, as people in lower socio-‐economic groups are spending a much greater proportion of their income on healthy food than those in higher socio-‐economic groups.[12,13] people living in disadvantaged areas face physical barriers relating to poor access to transport and they are more likely to be affected by mobility issues or other functional limitations such as the inability to lift groceries.[14,15] Food affordability has been identified as a barrier to adopting a healthier diet among vulnerable populations living with T2D, both in Australia16-‐18 and overseas.[19, 20] This paper explores food security issues faced by low-‐income earners living with T2D as part of a broader investigation of the impact of socio-‐economic disadvantage on the experience of diabetes
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