UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States; a major cause of nontraumatic amputations, blindness, and endstage kidney disease; and a significant risk factor for coronary heart disease and stroke. In California, as growing rates of obesity send the rates of Type 2 diabetes to unprecedented levels,there are also troubling indications of insufficient efforts at prevention and education, as well as barriers in the health care system that are resulting in an alarming number of cases in which diabetes is not appropriately managed,putting individuals in jeopardy. This policy brief presents these and other findings from the 2001 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS 2001), California’s largest representative health survey of the state and its counties.