Mayor Eric Adams tamed his own diabetes — now a report commissioned by his Health Department is recommending a well-funded citywide campaign to curb the debilitating and potentially deadly chronic disease afflicting 1 million other New Yorkers.
The report calls for the opening more diabetes treatment centers in hospitals in poor neighborhoods, overhauling Medicaid reimbursement to cover more diabetes monitoring and prevention programs, expanding healthier food options in underserved communities and sponsoring public health campaigns.
The report notes an increase of amputations of people with diabetes and that the chronic disease disproportionately impacts residents of color.
Black and Latino New Yorkers are twice as likely to have diabetes as white New Yorkers, the study said.
“The ongoing diabetes epidemic in New York City is a public health crisis leading to enormous harms to New Yorkers, including vision loss and blindness, kidney and nerve damage, heart disease, stroke, and lower limb amputation,” said the report, co-authored by the Health Department with medical advocacy groups Health People and Black Health/National Black Leadership Commission.
The study also emphasized that COVID-19 worsened the toll for people with diabetes, whose high blood sugars put them more at risk of becoming a casualty of the deadly virus.
“Our city must confront diabetes with the necessary investment in public response and proven measures that the severity of the diabetes epidemic demands,” the report said.
After temporarily losing his vision to Type 2 diabetes a decade ago, Eric Adams turned over a new leaf — switching to a plant-based diet and eating greens such as kale and spinach. He also has waged a campaign to discourage New Yorkers — including kids — from consuming sugary drinks, including chocolate milk — provoking a backlash from the upstate dairy industry.
“I had permanent nerve damage in my hands and feet that the doctors stated would lead to amputation,” Adams told The Post in 2021. “I [also] had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.”
Chris Norwood. executive director of the not-for-profit group Health People who served as a co-chair of the Health Department’s diabetes working group that produced the report, said she found it a “little weird” that neither Adams nor his health officials have embraced or promoted its findings and recommendations.
“Mr. Mayor, we need you. We need your inspiration. He knows the great results people can get. He should see that as many people as possible get that kind of support,” Norwood said.
She said current city funding is clearly inadequate to dramatically curb diabetes.
Adams recently recommended across-the-board budget cuts to agencies including the health department to close a projected multi-billion dollar budget gap — raising questions of where the funding would come from to wage a war against diabetes.
The health department, when asked about the report, stopped short of endorsing it and claimed the Adams administration has taken “aggressive action” to help residents control and reverse the chronic disease.
“This report reflects the urgency of addressing diabetes and other chronic diseases – on which this Administration has taken aggressive action and made substantive investments. For example, the Administration recently launched a health agenda, dubbed HealthyNYC, that sets ambitious targets, including reducing heart and diabetes-related diseases by five percent by 2030,” a Health Department spokesman said.
The department mentioned programs that the mayor himself has promoted including plant-based meals in public schools and hospitals and the expansion of “lifestyle medicine services” at six new sites to provide patients living with chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure the tools and lifestyle interventions to improve their health.
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