The health education provided to diabetic patients and the impact of age, race, gender, co-morbidities and payment types

The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between patients with diabetes and which of them do and do not receive health education in an ambulatory care setting. In this project the data utilized are from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). The software used for running statistical analysis was the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18.0. The aim of the project was to investigate the association of age, gender, race/ethnicity, primary payer and comorbidities to understand the impact of these variables and the diabetic patients who did and did not receive health education.;The final conclusion was that the diabetes patients who visit ambulatory care center and have no health insurance or are underinsured are more likely to receive health education. The mean age of diabetic patients was 62 years, compared to the average age of the sample, which was 42 years of age. The younger diabetic patients were more likely than the older ones to receive education concerning their diabetes; however, it is not certain that the difference in age is clinically relevant; the mean age of patients receiving education was 60 years of age compared to a mean age of 63 for those diabetic patients who did not receive health education. The limitation of the study was that the data was cross-sectional and could not be used for the determination of causal factors.