GP Diabetes Awareness and Treatment Adherence Songs can enhance diabetes education. Improving diabetes education is important because the disease affects over 25 million people in the United States, and approximately 2 million people aged 20 years or older were newly diagnosed with the disease.  Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States and is the leading cause of kidney failure, limb amputations, and new cases of blindness among adults.  Diabetes also impacts directly and indirectly the medical costs for the United States, with estimates of $174 billion annually. It’s clear new communications tools to support prevention, treatment adherence and self-management are needed.

Using Music-Based Messages As a Tool to Increase Diabetes Awareness

Music can be an important culturally-tailored and age-appropriate strategy to improve awareness amongst the general population and to educate people with diabetes about active self-management.  The technique can also be utilized to to enhance psychological supports, and enhance communication between people with diabetes and their health care providers.  Music serves as a well-documented source of social communication of information and social influence as well as social norms.  It is an integral component of many forms of persuasive communication because it is engaging and repeatable