Per the Office of Minority Health, in 2018, African American adults were 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes by a physician. Data also suggests that racism and lack of access to quality care is exacerbating the diabetes epidemic, pushing diabetes patients to a higher likelihood to heart disease, and twice as likely to die than others without diabetes.
Jessica Jones and Wendy Lopez aren’t allowing that to happen without a fight.
The registered dietitians and entrepreneurs founded Diabetes Digital, the latest venture from their media brand Food Heaven; it is a virtual nutrition counseling service aimed at transforming the landscape of diabetes and pre-diabetes management. It is offered across 23 states, with plans for extended expansion.
“Diabetes Digital is more than a platform; it’s a movement towards a more personalized and empathetic approach to diabetes care,” said Jessica Jones, CEO in a news release. “Leveraging our extensive experience from Food Heaven, we’re thrilled to offer a service that truly resonates with the needs of today’s clients.”
The platform provides weight inclusive and culturally competent care led by comprehensive hour-long appointments, virtual consultations available in Spanish. The platform also welcomes Medicare customers as well as other forms of insurance including Aetna, BCBS, Cigna, Health Net, and United.
“It’s important that people see themselves in health and wellness so that they’re able to feel like this is attainable for them, because when wellness is constantly marketed as a white woman who is eating really exclusive food, people don’t see themselves represented in that,” Lopez told Huffpost in 2019. “So if this is what wellness is positioned as and they feel like wellness is just not something that is for them, it’s important that we have different representations of what wellness means — for black people, for people who have different body sizes, for people who have physical limitations.”
