What is The Haitian Diabetes Study?

The Haitian Diabetes Study (HDS) seeks to understand and overcome barriers to self-management activities of type 2 diabetes, especially among Haitian immigrants in the United States. We spend time researching and coming up with possible solutions to help facilitate better care of type 2 diabetes. Along with traditional survey methods, the research utilizes innovative devices to capture a complete picture of self and family-management techniques, which in turn will lead to better outcomes in patient care.

Because our studies are focused primarily on the Haitian immigrant population, our research provides a unique perspective on management of chronic conditions on a traditionally understudied population. This is important, because it is necessary to understand the needs of a specific demographic to better aid in their healthcare.

We have found that there are unique challenges when it comes to dealing with healthcare for this population, specifically when it comes to management of their diabetes. Because of this, we take the time to study what factors influence the care of these individuals and what we can do as a healthcare system to better serve them with their specific needs. Sometimes the changes do not even need to be that dramatic to make a huge difference, but we must be aware of the contributing factors before we can try to make a difference.

As we progress in our research, we hope to be able to find more factors that can better the outcome for these patients and open up areas of research to help other underserved communities as well.

Research is conducted at the Boston College William F. Connell School of Nursing.