School of Medicine

As the Chinese-speaking population continues to increase in the United States and as the rate of diabetes increases amongst them, it becomes more imperative that Chinese-speaking diabetics are educated about their disease. Given that diabetes education is more effective when delivered in a culturally appropriate way and in a group setting, we evaluated the effectiveness of group-teaching sessions that emphasized the use of story-telling and participant interaction. With minimal use of didactic teaching, patients' baseline knowledge was evaluated with pre- and post-tests that on average increased by 69.6% and LDL improved on average by 10%. There was no significant change in the hemoglobin A1C values and BMI, which was to be expected given that lifestyle changes take longer than 3 months to fully implement.