From wordinblack.com
By Theresa Renart
New York City is sizzling and the extreme heat presents a significant threat for New Yorkers living with diabetes that we don’t talk about nearly often enough.
Dehydration spikes blood glucose levels and can reduce kidney function. Diabetes damages nerves in the sweat glands, and overall, is a condition harder to manage in the heat.
Combatting the mounting diabetes crisis in New York City amid this era of rising temperatures requires more public awareness, proactive policy changes, and investments in public health.
As a nurse specializing in diabetes education, I’m on the frontlines and see how this disease alters lives — often in ways that could have been prevented with earlier intervention. Black New Yorkers are particularly vulnerable and more likely to succumb to the disease than their white counterparts.
More than a million New Yorkers live with diabetes, and 1 in 6 has blood sugar levels high enough that their diabetes is considered “uncontrolled,” resulting in increased risk of kidney failure or stroke. New Yorkers living in neighbourhoods suffering from the urban heat island effect, where a lack of tree cover and air-conditioning can make it feel significantly hotter, are particularly vulnerable.
Due to longstanding inequities, many of these neighbourhoods also suffer from higher rates of diabetes — including in the Bronx, where as many as 1 adult in 5 has been diagnosed with the condition.
We want at-risk New Yorkers to get tested. At the same time, the city and state must commit to expanding access to resources, medical technologies, and education that can help people manage and control this condition.
Having treated 20 patients on average per week over the past 25 years, I’ve seen the trends shaping this crisis and how New Yorkers are suffering severe complications at younger ages.
In one upsetting case, I worked with a 20-year-old patient who lost his vision, had a limb amputated, and is now on dialysis. Sadly, the rate of toe and lower-limb amputations has increased about 75% between 2009 and 2017, and researchers expect both type 1 and type 2 diabetes to increase in young people over the next 40 years.
Many of my patients struggle to follow their medication regimens or make necessary lifestyle changes — not because they do not care about their health, but because they have never received the proper education, including guidance about how to take insulin, store their medication, and test their blood sugar.
Through my work, I’ve found that we need to meet people where they are to motivate them to make the proper lifestyle changes, whether that’s swapping out white rice with brown or just making a brisk walk a part of their everyday routine.
However, these efforts must be augmented by strong institutional support, including ongoing public investments in initiatives and programming designed to promote healthy lifestyle changes. We must improve and expand access to nutritional foods and boost educational and counselling programming, particularly in high-risk neighbourhoods where many residents lack access to proper medical care and healthy foods — gaps that may become more pronounced with cutbacks to federal funding.
We must also invest in policies and programs that promote physical activity and social connection in communities
These and other initiatives were outlined in a plan released by the city earlier this year focusing on tackling health inequities and reducing deaths from chronic illnesses like diabetes. It’s a great start. Now, we collectively — policymakers; lawmakers; non-profit, clergy, and community leaders; and healthcare organizations like ours — must work to ensure it doesn’t just sit on a shelf collecting dust.
City agencies must continue to engage with community groups and partners as they work to implement these proposals. At a broader level, we must continue to expand access to diabetes management technology, including devices like continuous glucose monitors that allow people to check their blood sugar in real time without pricking their fingers, that provide New Yorkers, regardless of income, with the best available tools to manage their condition.
Diabetes is a mounting crisis — but it doesn’t have to be. Let’s work to make it the beginning of the end when it comes to reversing these disturbing trends.
Theresa Renart serves as a clinical education diabetic nurse specialist at ElderServe Health. She lives in Queens.
https://wordinblack.com/2025/08/diabetes-is-a-crisis-and-extreme-heat-heightens-risks/
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