Bangladeshis represent one of the city’s fastest growing immigrant communities, but they also have another distinction: as a group, they are developing diabetes at an alarming rate.
Diabetes is spreading rapidly within the Asian American population in general and within the Bangladeshi community specifically: An estimated 25 percent of the 25,000 Bangladeshis living in the New York area are believed to have some form of the disease.
Overall, Asian Americans are twice as likely as Caucasians to develop Type 2 diabetes, according to research conducted by the Asian American Diabetes Initiative at the Joslin Diabetes Center.
To fight the spreading growth of the disease, an outreach program based at the Center for the Study of Asian American Health at New York University is focusing on using a series of public meetings to raise awareness about diabetes and promote preventative measures within the city’s Bangladeshi communities, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens.
“We need to make assessments, we need to learn, and then we need to take action,” said Shamsul Haque, the Consul General of Bangladesh in New York, who spoke at a recent event, “Voices from the Community: Diabetes Among Bangladeshis in NYC,” hosted by the D.R.E.A.M. Project.
One Group’s DREAM
The year-old D.R.E.A.M. Project, which stands for Diabetes Research Education and Action for Minorities, is offering free six-month educational programs taught by community health workers that will show patients how to monitor their symptoms, modify their diets and use exercise to help stave off complications of the disease, such as blindness, limb amputations and kidney failure.
Activists hope to spread the word to Bangladeshis who might otherwise have no warning of the danger lurking in their new lives.
The reasons for the accelerated spread of the diabetes within the Bangladeshi community are both genetic and environmental. While research continues on the subject, a preliminary finding seems to indicate that shifting from a diet that incorporated vegetables, rice and fish to a more Westernized, high-fat, high-calorie diet is a contributing factor.
Krittika Ghosh, a project coordinator at the D.R.E.A.M. Project, noted the relative availability of food in the U.S. fosters overeating.
“Food is more easily accessible here than in the home country,” she said. “Things that were very special occasion foods, like biryani and curries, those were not eaten every day back home.”
Barriers to Better Health
Nadia Islam, the Deputy Director of Research for the program, said that many of the newest arrivals become sedentary because they are forced to accept housing in poorer neighborhoods where crime might be an issue, keeping them indoors for longer periods of time.
She also cited the lack of health insurance and access to other resources as contributors to the high diabetes rate.
“A large portion of the Bangladeshi community are working in low wage positions, non-standardized work like taxi driving, restaurant workers, domestic workers, so industries where there really are no access to benefit packages,” she said.
Manmunul Huq, a community health worker for the D.R.E.A.M. Project and a founder of the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance, said nearly 80 percent of the city’s cab drivers lack health care coverage and noted more than 20 percent of the city’s cab operators are Bangladeshi.
“Those guys are working 12-hours shifts, seven days a week, keeping this city moving, but they don’t have any stable income, health benefits, time off benefits, nothing,” he said.
Huq and his fellow activist hope that through the D.R.E.A.M Project that members of his community who moved to New York to start over can avoid the nightmare of diabetes.
(For a Q&A with Manmunul Huq, go here.)
