In three urban communities in Accra, Ghana, a team of researchers from nine disciplines is working with local residents and policymakers to design interventions that could reduce the rising toll of type 2 diabetes. This matters because type 2 diabetes now affects roughly 6% of Ghanaian adults, causing poor health, premature death, and heavy costs for families and the healthcare system. Yet most prevention strategies have been imported from other settings, without accounting for the specific historical, political, environmental, and social factors that shape diabetes risk in Ghana’s fast-growing cities. The CARE:Diabetes project fills that gap by combining community surveys, social science fieldwork, and mapping of both formal and informal healthcare providers to understand what actually drives the disease in these neighbourhoods. If the research succeeds, it will produce co-created intervention strategies grounded in local realities, not external templates. The team will adapt and test a community mobilisation approach that has already proven effective elsewhere. The project also assesses digital infrastructure to identify opportunities for using mobile or online tools to raise awareness, prevent disease, and strengthen health systems. The result could be a replicable model for reducing diabetes risk in other urban African settings, where the disease is rising fastest.
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Type 2 diabetes (T2D) affects approximately 6% of adults in Ghana resulting in poor mental and physical health, premature death, and increased costs for individuals, families and healthcare services. The CARE:Diabetes project represents a research collaboration between public health specialists, historians, social scientists, economists, political scientists, psychologists, pharmacists and engineers to understand the contextual drivers and consequences of T2D in three urban communities in Accra, Ghana. This will include research into the historical, political and physical context of T2D, giving us insights into how environmental, economic and social factors have shaped T2D risk in this urban setting. Information on individual, household and community burdens of disease and risk factors will be gathered through community surveys while social science methods will provide deep understanding of contextual determinants and perceptions of disease. Assessment of digital infrastructure and development capacity will identify opportunities for digital strategies to raise awareness of T2D, prevent disease, and strengthen health systems. We will also map available formal and informal health care providers and work with these, community groups and policy makers to co-create intervention strategies to reduce T2D risk in the study area. In particular, we will adapt and test a specific community mobilisation intervention that has proven successful in reducing diabetes risk in other settings.
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