National Diabetes Month

Floor Speech

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Ms. BROWN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Jackson and Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick. I thank our CBC colleagues for speaking tonight on this important topic and for the incredible work they do on so many issues impacting our communities.

National Diabetes Month is a call to action. It is a call to action to invest in our people, invest in our neighborhoods, and invest in public health and medical research. It is a call to take the simple and direct actions that are often right in front of us.

Just a few weeks ago, President Biden declared November to be National Diabetes Month.

While diabetes is truly a widespread problem, it is also a disease that shows some of the deeper sickness of America's history. Roughly one in eight Black Americans has diabetes, and nearly 40 percent of the population that doesn't have diabetes is already prediabetic. It is not just an older person's disease.

In the last two decades, the prevalence of diabetes among people under 20 who are Black and Hispanic Americans has increased by 95 percent.

Mr. Speaker, when you add it all up, Black Americans are 60 percent more likely than White Americans to have diabetes.

In Cuyahoga County, which I represent, the Black diabetes rate is 25 percent. For Whites, it is 7 percent. When the CDC released the Census tract data, it showed there were neighborhoods in Cleveland where the diabetes rate was nearly 40 percent.

We aren't just more likely to have this disease; it is also hitting Black people much harder. Nationwide, we are two-and-one-half times more likely to be hospitalized by diabetes than White Americans, and we are twice as likely to die from diabetes.

There is a lot that is broken here, and it doesn't have to be this way. Three years ago, as a member of the Cuyahoga County Council, I helped lead the effort to pass a resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis, and diabetes is one of the indicators we pointed to. It has so many systemic and structural factors: the legacies of Jim Crow and slavery, poverty and a lack of opportunity, denied access to healthcare, and a lack of doctors and nurses from our community who can hear us and listen to us. There are so many different factors all coming together to produce a disparate impact.

In so many ways, this is the same story we see repeated with Black maternal health and other racial health disparities.

Unfortunately, with diabetes rates this high, it is having a cascade effect on our overall well-being because diabetes is expensive, chronic, and potentially deadly.

We just saw this with the pandemic. Four in 10 adults who died from COVID-19 also had diabetes.

Nonetheless, step one is identifying the problem, and that is why we are here this evening. Step two is action. We have real progress to celebrate thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which established a $35 per month cap on insulin costs for those on Medicare. In response to the IRA, Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies also announced price caps and price reductions for people with non-Medicare insurance.

Not a single Republican in either Chamber voted for the Inflation Reduction Act. Nevertheless, Democrats in Congress and the Biden-Harris administration stepped forward to deliver anyway.

Just about every week, there is another effort by House Republicans to repeal some part of it, but the IRA is here to stay. Black Americans are benefiting from this law. The IRA is lowering healthcare costs for seniors across the country and saving many of our constituents hundreds of dollars a year.

While the data around diabetes is alarming, the Inflation Reduction Act shows that we don't have to accept the unacceptable. We have a lot more work to do to address diabetes and public health disparities more broadly. The stark disparities with diabetes were centuries in the making. We can't change that past, but we can build a better future.

We need to make healthcare more affordable, from drugs and treatment to coverage. We also need to ensure that healthcare providers look like America and look like the communities they serve. We need to help train the next generation of Black medical professionals. We need to invest in SNAP and WIC so people can afford healthy food. We need to invest in and fully fund NIH and CDC efforts to study diabetes and treat diabetes so we can improve care.

The budget fight we have been fighting for the past 6 months shows where each party is aligned and whose side they are on. If we cut funding for SNAP, push more people off Medicaid, continue to cut investments in public health, and forbid every Federal agency from even using the words ``equity, diversity, and inclusion,'' then we know exactly what will happen and who will suffer.

The stakes are clear, and my CBC colleagues and I are going to keep fighting for our constituents.

Mr. Speaker, let's fight diabetes and help every American live a healthy life.

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