Patient Care

Our Diabetes Center helps patients modify their behavior and better manage their disease and related conditions. The Center is managed by a board certified endocrinologist and nurse practitioner, who work in collaboration with other healthcare professionals, including a dietitian, primary care physician, two certified diabetes educators and a medical assistant.

The aim of the Center is to achieve optimal health status, improve the quality of life and reduce the need for hospitalizations and emergency room visits. This is accomplished through diabetes self-management training that focuses on patients eating healthy, being active, monitoring their blood sugar, taking medication, and reducing risks.

This is a need that is particularly critical in the Bronx, New York City’s diabetes “epicenter.” While diabetes crosses all ethnic and economic lines, residents of the city’s poorer neighborhoods are more than twice as likely to die from diabetes as those who live in the city’s wealthier neighborhoods.

Many area residents have prediabetes without knowing it (as do many “full-blown” diabetics). That’s why those at higher risk for diabetes – who are overweight, have a family member with diabetes, have high blood pressure, are African-American or Hispanic, or are over the age of 65 – should be screened for prediabetes. Without early intervention, most of those people with prediabetes will go on to develop diabetes.  

Early intervention often includes daily blood sugar monitoring, regular doctor visits, healthy lifestyle changes (e.g., eating a healthy diet which includes plenty of fruit and vegetables, drinking water instead of soda and skin milk instead of whole milk; and moderate exercising for at least 30 minutes, five times a day). Medication may also be prescribed.

People with poorly controlled diabetes are at high risk of heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, amputation and death. It is the fourth leading cause of death in New York City.