Diabetes Complications in Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations in the USA

Racial and ethnic minority populations have a higher burden of diabetes-related complications. There have been many epidemiologic studies to better define these racial/ethnic disparities in diabetes outcomes with additional studies offering interventions to mitigate them. This narrative review highlights the epidemiologic trends in diabetes complications specific to racial and ethnic minorities and underscores differences in microvascular and macrovascular complications of diabetes, health care utilization, and diabetes prevention efforts and also reviews interventions aimed to reduce racial/ethnic disparities and their limitations.

While we have seen in general an overall improvement in complication rates for all people with diabetes, the disparities between Black and Hispanic compared to non-Hispanic White people with diabetes seem to persist. There is a continued need to better understand the underlying causes of and strategies to mitigate race/ethnicity disparities in diabetes complications in the USA.