Diabetes Prevention and Control:
 A Public Health Imperative

Foreword

As managers of government programs, we often wish for guidance on the best ways to help fellow citizens improve their health. This volume is a how-to guide—detailing the most effective methods for prevention. It shares the lessons others have learned as they developed innovative strategies to reduce the burden of chronic disease.

In support of the President’s HealthierUS initiative, I am leading a new department-wide effort—Steps to a HealthierUS. The heart of this program is personal responsibility for the choices Americans make and social responsibility to ensure that policy makers support prevention programs that foster healthy behaviors.

Steps envisions a healthy, strong United States—where diseases are prevented when possible, controlled when necessary, and treated when appropriate. Steps is a bold shift in our approach to the health of our citizens, moving us from a disease care system to a health care system. As public managers you know that we can no longer sustain the skyrocketing health care costs that over-reliance on treatment has created, nor can Americans sustain the suffering that preventable diseases cause.

We have initially focused the Steps initiative on reducing the major health burden created by diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and cancer. Steps will also address the related lifestyle choices of poor nutrition, physical inactivity, tobacco use, and risky youth behavior. This document focuses on promising prevention strategies for these diseases and the risk factors that cause them.

It is always important to do what works, not just what has always been done. I hope this volume helps you to envision the path and make real the steps to a healthier US.

Tommy G. Thompson
Secretary of Health and Human Services
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

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