Title: Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most
Headings: Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most
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Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most
Health care disparities heighten disease differences between African-Americans and white Americans.

Content: In addition, blacks with diabetes have more serious complications -- such as loss of vision, loss of limbs, and kidney failure -- than whites, notes Maudene Nelson, RD, certified diabetes educator at Naomi Barry Diabetes Center at Columbia University. "The theory is that maybe it is access to health care, or maybe a cultural fatalism -- thinking, 'It is God's will,' or, 'My family had it so I have it' -- not a sense of something I can have an impact on so it won't hurt me," Nelson tells WebMD. " But more and more there is thinking it is something that makes blacks genetically more susceptible. It is hard to tell how much of it is what." The Forgotten Killer
There is, indeed, evidence that African-Americans may have a genetic susceptibility to diabetes. Even so, Nelson says, the real problem is empowering patients to keep their diabetes under control. "Patients often have the sense that they are not as much in charge of managing their