A nutrition-focused review of the interventions in US-living Latino communities with type II diabetes

Mélanie Guirette; Magdalena Sevilla-Gonzalez; Maureen Balaguera; Augusto Enrique Caballero

doi:10.3389/fnut.2024.1418683

A nutrition-focused review of the interventions in US-living Latino communities with type II diabetes

Front Nutr. 2024 Sep 18:11:1418683. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1418683. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Mélanie Guirette¹, Magdalena Sevilla-Gonzalez^{2

3

4}, Maureen Balaguera⁵, Augusto Enrique Caballero⁶

Affiliations

¹ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Department of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Tufts University, Boston, MA, United States.
² Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit, Mongan Institute, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States.
³ Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
⁴ Programs in Metabolism and Medical & Population Genetics, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, United States.
⁵ Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School's Teaching Hospital, Boston, MA, United States.
⁶ Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a chronic, debilitating disease that disproportionally affects the Hispanic/Latino community residing in the United States. Optimal nutrition therapy is fundamental to the proper management of T2D and must be culturally adapted to facilitate permanent behavior change in this population. This review selected and assessed the nutrition components of interventions aimed to improve T2D outcomes in US-based Latinos/Hispanics, published from 2002 to 2023. An overview of the participant characteristics, nutrition intervention, and dietary assessment and outcomes is included. Nutrition interventions in this community benefit from the inclusion of bicultural registered dietitian nutritionist (RDNs) to assure the counseling team promotes culturally tailored nutrition recommendations based on current dietary guidelines. Nutrition assessment and outcomes should be captured with the use of validated dietary assessment tools and dietary quality indices appropriate to their target population. Standardizing these practices will facilitate intervention comparability and replicability and ultimately better target the needs of this community.

Keywords: Latinos; cultural relativism; dietary assessment methodologies; medical nutrition therapy; type 2 diabetes.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. MS-G is supported by American Diabetes Association grants 9-22-PDFPM-04, NIDDK UM1 DK078616, and 5U24DK132733–02.