What Is Diabetes

What Is Diabetes—and Why Does It Affect So Many Latinxs?

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy. Most of what you eat becomes glucose (a type of sugar), and insulin—a hormone made by your pancreas—helps move that sugar into your cells for fuel. But with diabetes, that system doesn’t work properly.

There are two main types:

Type 1: The body doesn’t make insulin. It’s often diagnosed in children or young adults.
Type 2: The body doesn’t use insulin well. This is the more common type—and the one most Latinxs are dealing with.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Latinx adults are more than 70% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than non-Hispanic white adults.

And that’s not all:

Over 1 in 5 Latinx adults over 20 have diabetes—many without even knowing it.
Latinas have a higher risk of developing gestational diabetes, which occurs during pregnancy and increases the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes later on.

Why the gap? Factors include: