Workshop 2: Diabetes and Ethnicity

Our second IDEA-R workshop tackled research and practice addressing diabetes among ethnic and other minoritised communities. Dr Kamila Hawthorne spoke to the group about her own work on the subject, and the tools she had developed for culturally appropriate health education. This presentation (see videocast clips and presentation below) led into a set of fascinating discussions ranging across the disciplines and bringing in a wide range of research approaches and interventions. The group challenged the idea of 'hard to reach groups', and asked whether they were instead just 'easy to ignore'. We were also joined by two experienced research users, Qaim Zaidi of the British Heart Foundation and David (Dai) Williams of Diabetes Cymru (the Welsh arm of Diabetes UK). After lunch, Qaim and Dai both spoke to us about their experiences working with ethnic communites, the ways in which they used and accessed research -- and most importantly, the interventions they used and the types of research from which they felt they would most benefit. We discussed Community Champions, assessing outcomes, and influencing service commissioners to take minorities into account. Food practices were also an important aspect of these conversations. Professors Ala Szczepura and Mark Johnson brought in the issues of medicalisation and genetics, a subject on which we all had quite a bit to say! After a full discussion -- and another energising break for coffee and cupcakes -- we returned to talk about ways in which we could take what we had learned to enhance community access to health education, research and successful interventions. We also drew on Dai and Qaim's expertise to learn more about accessing the media, and making our own work more accessible to non-specialists. Video clips of all of our discussions are available below, labelled by topics and speakers as appropriate. As part of our preparation for this workshop, participants nominated key articles in their own fields; these (and others which emerged from a transdiciplinary literature review) are summarised in the Ethnicity and Diabetes Annotated Bibliography (Word Document) .

Discussion and Presentation Videos (by topic)

Meet the Participants

Health Education and Service Improvements

Medicalisation and genetics

Research from the Perspective of Research Users

Food Practices and Food Cultures

Ethnicity, Race and Diversity

Using the Media