Hunter College (CUNY)

Unhealthy employees are a major cost to employers. Employers can benefit from investing in the prevention and treatment and are often times the most equipped to control and prevent diabetes. The CUNY Campaign Against Diabetes sought to reduce the incidence of uncontrolled diabetes in CUNY students, faculty, staff, and their family members through the implementation of a work-based diabetes prevention, management and wellness initiative.

NYHealth awarded the City University of New York (CUNY) a two-year grant to plan and pilot test several components of a campus-wide diabetes prevention and management program for the faculty, staff and students. CUNY is the largest urban public university in the nation. It includes 23 institutions including 11 senior colleges and six community colleges as well as several professional and graduate schools. CUNY employs more than 6,000 full-time faculty, and several thousand part-time faculty and support staff. Its campuses are located throughout the city and it is the region’s largest supplier of health providers, teachers and other professionals.

The campus-wide diabetes wellness initiative had a three-part objective to develop, pilot test, and evaluate: (a) prevention campaigns to make healthier food and more physical activity available on campus and to encourage behavior change; (b) diabetes management workshops for students with family members with diabetes; and (c) education/support groups for students and faculty with or at risk of diabetes.

This campus-wide diabetes wellness initiative advanced the efforts of the CUNY Diabetes Task Force, a five-year plan to strengthen CUNY’s capacity to prevent Type 2 diabetes among students, faculty, staff and their respective family members. The Campaign mobilized CUNY’s teaching, research, and service capacities to both improve the management and prevention of diabetes among the CUNY community.