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Ann Williams, PhD, RN |
Researcher Ann Williams demonstrates that visually impaired people with diabetes administer their insulin properly
Posted 7/8/2010
As a diabetes educator and adjunct faculty member at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Ann Williams, PhD, RN has long taken both personal and professional interest in the 23.6 million Americans who have diabetes, or 7.8 percent of the population (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Among the 17.6 million diagnosed cases, 3.6 million (about 20 percent) have visual impairment.
This latter group's usage of insulin pens (intended to measure and administer doses of insulin) to self-manage their diabetes was the subject of Dr. Williams' recent research study. She found that the visually impaired do just as well with the pens as their sighted counterparts—and in some cases, they do even better.
Labels on insulin pens caution against their use by the visually impaired. However, this study challenges such thinking by demonstrating little difference between the performance of two groups--30 people with visual impairments that Dr. Williams recruited at the 2009 National Federation for the Blind meeting in Detroit and 30 she found in Cleveland who could see and read the pen's directions.
"The study also raises questions about the validity of the disclaimer that pharmaceutical companies put on the labels," Dr. Williams says. Together with Associate Dean of Research Shirley Moore, PhD, RN, FAAN, Dr. Williams has helped to establish the university's National Institutes of Nursing Research/National Institutes of Health-funded Full Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (FIND) Lab, which promotes including disabled individuals in mainstream research.
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