Diabetes is a disease that ‘currently affects 346 million people worldwide’ (WHO 2011, Diabetes Program, p. 1). The National Health Priority Action Council (NHPAC) highlighted that ‘the direct health care expenditure on diabetes in 2000-01 was $812 million’(NHPAC 2006, p.7). This essay will address the role of health screening and health promotion in regards to diabetes mellitus. It will discuss the topics of morbidity, mortality, and aetiology as well as strategies to reduce incidence and prevalence, current strategies for health promotion, the role of health screening, future planning, and the effectiveness of such strategies. There are a variety of classifications of diabetes, which include Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes,
Such research (WHO 2003, p. 2), also highlights that with treatment cardiovascular disease can be prevented in people with type 2 diabetes, before the symptoms arise. Diabetes is diagnosed by deciphering the level of glucose in the blood (WHO 2003, p. 1). Those at high risk or those of a high-risk ethnicity such as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander should be tested more frequently (NHPAC 2006). The Australian Diabetes in Pregnancy Society recommends that all pregnant women should be tested for gestational diabetes (NHPAC 2006).

Some strategies aimed at health promotion and early detection for diabetes include the National Health Priority Area, the National Diabetes Strategy, the Diabetes Australia Strategic Plan, the National Diabetes Council, the National Chronic Disease Strategy, and Active Australia. The Australian health minister’s action to include diabetes mellitus as ‘one of the five national health priority areas’ would assist in reducing the prevalence and impact of the disease; as well as ‘funding $7.7 million over three years for activities that would improve the awareness and the management of diabetes in Australia’ (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, p.1).

The national diabetes strategy (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, p. 1), was put in place to ‘improve the prevention and management of diabetes in Australia’. The