Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes Affect Your Workforce

One in three U.S. adults has prediabetes—86 million people! Nine in 10 don’t even know they have it. Prediabetes puts a person at increased risk for type 2 diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.

Without intervention, many people with prediabetes could develop type 2 diabetes within 5 years. Type 2 diabetes puts individuals at risk of serious health problems, including:

• Heart attack
• Stoke
• Blindness
• Kidney failure
• Loss of toes, feet, or legs

Check out our infographics.

Read the National Diabetes Statistics Report to learn more about the toll that diabetes is taking on the United States.

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One in 10 U.S. adults currently has diabetes. If trends continue, 1 in 5 will have it by 2025. A person with diabetes incurs on average $13,700 annually in medical expenses; that’s about 2.3 times the expenses of a person without diabetes.

It adds up. In 2012, the total cost of diagnosed diabetes was $245 billion, up 41% over a 5-year period. Each year, diabetes costs employers about $69 billion in lost productivity.

It’s no exaggeration; diabetes is a serious workforce issue. But you can help prevent type 2 diabetes; and it’s typically much cheaper to prevent diabetes than to treat the consequences of the disease.

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Sources

Boyle JP, Thompson TJ , Gregg EW, Barker LE, Williamson DF. (2010). Projection of the year 2050 burden of diabetes in the US adult population: dynamic modeling of incidence, mortality, and prediabetes prevalence. Population Health Metrics. Available from http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/8/1/29 on May 7, 2013. 

CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation. National Diabetes Surveillance System. Available from https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data.

Yang W, Dall TM, Halder P, Gallo P, Kowal SL, Hogan PF. Economic costs of diabetes in the U.S. in 2012. Diabetes Care 2013;36(4):1033–1046. Available from http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/4/1033.full.pdf+html.