How far do you live from a healthcare clinic? Around the corner or across the country?

In the Western world we have come to expect easy access to healthcare facilities, but that's not always the case. And, access to health care is essential for people living with diabetes or other chronic diseases, because they need regular treatment and screenings for complications.

For some very remote locations, as is the case some places in Greenland, accessing health care can take days. In addition, Western influence has caught up with Greenland and started what could be the beginning of a diabetes epidemic. Inuit-specific gene variations may affect complications from diabetes, for which screenings can be especially challenging to perform in remote areas.

There are ideas for solutions, and some of them involve smarter screening programs using artificial intelligence. Is this sci-fi or everyday medical practice? How could it work in practice?

Considering these challenges with health care access, we need to do better with research-backed approaches to ensure public health.

Listen as three experts in public health and epidemiology, all with ties to Greenland, discuss the problems and solutions of diabetes care in remote regions.

Episode info

Guests

• Stine Byberg, Team Leader and postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the Steno Diabetes Center in Greenland

• Trine Jul Larsen, researcher at the Greenland Center for Health Research at the University of Greenland

• Marit Eika Jørgensen is a researcher at the Steno Diabetes Center in Greenland and Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark

Host

• Gretchen Repasky, Communications Director, Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine and University of Helsinki

Transcript

Download transcript

Publisher

Danish Diabetes Academy

Producer

Kontekst & Lyd

Resource list

• Stine Byberg: LinkedIn, Region Hovedstaden

• Marit Eika Jørgensen: LinkedIn, Steno Diabetes Centre Copenhagen

• Global maps of travel time to healthcare facilities

• Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen

• Steno Diabetes Center Greenland

• Greenland Center for Health Research

• Review about the T2D and obesity epidemic in Pima Indians of Arizona and Mexico

• Low prevalence of retinopathy among Greenland Inuit

• Microvascular complications in Nuuk, Greenland, among Greenlanders and non-Greenlanders diagnosed with type 2 diabetes

• Telemedicine in Greenland: Citizens' Perspectives