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Objectives: Diabetes is a significant public health concern in India, with Kerala being labeled as the diabetes capital of the country. The study aims to evaluate the prevalence, treatment, and management of diabetes to examine the unmet need for care to propose cost-effective strategies. Design: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a geographically defined cohort population in Ernakulam. Sample: This paper presents diabetes data of adults ≥30 years enrolled from the community cohort. The interviews were conducted with 997 participants at their residence. Measurement: Random blood glucose was assessed for each participant using a finger prick test. Results: The overall prevalence of diabetes was 30.1%, of which 4.1% of participants had undiagnosed diabetes. Among those with diabetes, 86.3% were aware of their diagnosis; among those aware, 86.5% were on treatment. Among those on treatment for diabetes, 54% achieved controlled blood sugar. Conclusion: The challenge in diabetes management is controlling the blood glucose levels of people who adhere to treatment. Younger employed females from lower-income quartiles have the highest risk. The study also raises questions about quality and strategies for medication compliance. The findings inspire future research on care needs, policies, and program responses to reduce the diabetes disease burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Despite harmful drinking causing a significant burden on global health, there is a large treatment gap, especially in low- and middle-income countries. A major barrier to care is the lack of adequately skilled human resources to deliver contextually appropriate treatments. This paper describes the systematic process used to develop Counselling for Alcohol Problems ( CAP), a brief psychological treatment (PT) for delivery by lay counselors in routine primary care settings to men with harmful drinking in India. Methods CAP was developed using a methodology involving 3 sequential steps: (i) identifying potential treatment strategies; (ii) developing a theoretical framework for the treatment; and (iii) evaluating the acceptability and feasibility of the treatment. Results CAP is a 3-phase treatment delivered over 1 to 4 sessions based on a motivational interviewing ( MI) stance and involves the following strategies: assessment and personalized feedback, family engagement, drink refusal skills, skills to address drinking urges, problem-solving skills and handling difficult emotions, and relapse prevention and management. Data from a case series were used to inform several adaptations to enhance the acceptability of CAP to the recipients and feasibility of delivery by lay counselors of the treatment, for example expansion of the target group to include alcohol-dependent patients and the extension of the delivery settings to include home-based delivery. There was preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of CAP. Conclusions CAP is an acceptable brief PT for harmful drinking delivered by lay counselors in primary care whose effectiveness is currently being tested in a randomized controlled trial based in primary care in Goa, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inadequate dietary intake is a critical underlying determinant of child undernutrition. This study examined the association between anthropometric‐based and food‐based nutritional failure among children in India. We used the 2015–2016 National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau data where anthropometric outcomes and food intake were both measured for each child. We followed the World Health Organization child growth reference standards to define anthropometric failures (i.e., height‐for‐age z score < −2 SD for stunting, weight‐for‐age z score < −2 SD for underweight, and weight‐for‐height z score < −2 SD for wasting), and the Indian Council of Medical Research recommended dietary allowance (RDA) to define adequacy in intake of calorie, protein, and fat. We used descriptive and regression‐based assessments to test the association between the two indicators of nutritional failure and also computed the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The prevalence of stunting, underweight, and wasting was 28.6%, 24.3%, and 12.8%, respectively, whereas 78.2%, 27.4%, and 50.8% of the children had below RDA norms consumption of calorie, protein, and fat, respectively. We found weak‐to‐null correlation between anthropometric failures and food failures (Pearson correlation ranging from −0.013 to 0.147) and poor discriminatory accuracy (AUC < 0.62), suggesting that in the Indian context, anthropometric failures are not directly associated with food intake. This finding highlights the need for improving adequate intake of macronutrients and draws attention toward adopting a multifactorial approach to improve child nutrition in India. Poor food intake itself merits exclusive policy focus as it is an important nutrition and health concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]