National Variations in Concordance Between Perceived and Clinical Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
Open Access
- Author:
- Wilkie, Sarah Kristine
- Area of Honors:
- Health Policy and Administration
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Patricia Y Miranda-Hartsuff, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Rhonda Be Lue, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Health disparities
disease perception
prevention
chronic disease
type 2 diabetes
risk perception - Abstract:
- Despite high prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in the United States, research indicates that individuals tend to inaccurately estimate their susceptibility. This study aims to understand the determinants of adults who are vulnerable to developing type 2 diabetes because they incorrectly perceive they are not at clinical risk. This study employs data from the 2011-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of adult respondents who were examined in the Mobile Examination Center (N=4,877). Stratified by clinical risk, logistic regression models were conducted in Stata/SE 14.1 to regress perceived risk onto health services utilization determinants. Among individuals with a clinical risk of type 2 diabetes, 61% incorrectly perceive themselves at no risk (p<0.0001), in unadjusted analyses. There were several findings from adjusted multivariate analyses. Men had 2.6 higher odds (95% CI: 1.91-3.45) of inaccurately perceiving their risk, compared to women. Relative to non-Hispanic Whites, Mexican Americans had 0.42 times the odds (95% CI: 0.27-0.67) of estimating their clinical risk inaccurately. Each additional year of age increased the odds of inaccurate risk assessment by 1.06 times (95% CI: 1.06-1.08), and each 1-unit decrease in self-rated health resulted in 0.79 times the odds (95% CI: 0.68-0.92) of inaccurately perceiving no risk. Overall, results indicate that men, non-Hispanic Whites, older adults, and adults with higher self-rated health were vulnerable to being at clinical risk but incorrectly perceiving no risk. This analysis indicates that awareness of diabetes risk is low, and education could enable individuals to estimate their risk of developing diabetes accurately.