Ensuring patients have good metabolic health is a key goal for all healthcare systems worldwide. While the importance of obesity and diabetes prevention has been known for decades, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a spotlight on this issue. Since its spread in late 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has caused millions of deaths, especially among people with coexisting metabolic comorbidities. Indeed, it has been widely shown that both impaired glucose metabolism and poorly controlled diabetes predispose patients to poor COVID-19 outcomes. In addition, other cardiometabolic conditions related to diabetes, such as obesity, hypertension and dyslipidemia are major factors driving higher mortality rates among patients hospitalized for COVID-19. The collision of the diabesity pandemic with the COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated the already heavy burden of cardiometabolic conditions, and of diabetes in particular, for millions of people worldwide. Diabetes, which affects about half a billion people, is a heterogenous condition with differences apparent between races, between genders and between age groups. The health disparity caused by racial, ethnic, gender and social differences is difficult to address, and requires sensitivity and perseverance from healthcare professionals, as well as the latest information and guidelines to support decision-making. Early strategies for prevention and treatment are needed, especially as incidence data suggests that a progressive reduction in the age at which diabetes is diagnosed is changing the diabetes panorama, with a rapidly increasing number of adolescents affected by type 2 diabetes. Youths with type 2 diabetes usually present with early complications (infections, gynecological/andrological, hepatic and/or psychological), respond poorly to treatment, and rapidly progress to microvascular and macrovascular complications. This represents an area of increasing need – awareness, research, testing, engagement, education and treatment to stop the increase in case numbers and impact the early morbidity and reduced quality of life incumbent on a diabetes diagnosis. This Digital Learning Journey aims to shape healthcare professionals’ approach to early diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and educating about diabetes and pre-diabetes in the (post)COVID-19 world, focusing in particular on the disparity of diabetes care among ethnic minorities and the new challenges posed by the increasing incidence of type 2 diabetes among adolescents.
