Spirituality and Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management Among African Americans in the Arkansas Delta

ABSTRACT

African Americans (AAs) disproportionately bear the national illness burden of type 2 diabetes (T2D). T2D self-management requires healthy diet, exercise, and often prescription medication. Although terms like “spirituality” and “religiosity” may vary in their meanings to different individuals and communities, the importance of spiritual beliefs to healthy self-management of chronic disease is a critical, emerging area of health research. This qualitative study aims to learn from the perceptions of adult AAs (15 males and 16 females, aged 18 years or older with a self-reported T2D diagnosis of 6 months or more) about spiritual issues that may either hinder or promote their T2D self-management in the social-cultural contexts of the Arkansas Delta. Participant narratives were gathered and analyzed using grounded theory. Using the concepts of spirituality and religiosity interchangeably, the participants positioned spirituality within their community's cultural and historical context of surviving great challenges. They narrated the meanings, some probably culturally specific, of chronic T2D according to their health/illness beliefs, spiritual beliefs in God as healer, and the role of church in T2D self-management. Future research on spirituality and T2D health behavior interventions needs to explore and understand the meanings of spirituality in terms of the study community's own perspectives.

KEYWORDS:

• Spirituality
• type 2 diabetes
• self-management
• African Americans
• Arkansas Delta

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was supported by a grant to Gauri Bhattacharya from the National Historically Black College and University Health Disparity Program. The author is grateful to the study participants for offering their experiences.

The author would like to thank Sophia F. Dziegielewski, editor, Barbara Maisevich, managing editor, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions and insightful comments, which have improved the manuscript significantly.