Michael Preston

Click above to to see an audio slideshow from the event

Bangladeshi’s are one of New York City’s fastest growing immigrant communities, but they also have another, less fortunate, and dangerous, distinction: as a group, they are developing diabetes at an alarming rate.

Diabetes is spreading rapidly within the Asian American population in general and within the Bangladeshi community specifically. According to research conducted by the Asian American Diabetes Initiative at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Asian Americans are twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes as are Caucasians.

As the number of Bangladeshis in the city exploded, so did their rates of being diagnosed with the disease. There are now over 25,000 Bangladeshi Americans in the New York City area, up from just a few thousand residents in the early part of this decade according to estimates from the 2007 American Community Survey. The majority of the Bangladeshi community is centered in Jackson Heights in Queens and in Kensington and Borough Park in Brooklyn. Many fled to America to pursue better economic opportunities and to escape from their home country’s political instability and extremely high levels of poverty and disease. So it is ironic that 25 percent of the city’s Bangladeshi residents are thought to have some form of diabetes.

To fight the spreading growth of the disease, an outreach program based at the Center for the Study of Asian American Health at New York University is focusing on using a series of public meetings to raise awareness about diabetes and promote preventative measures within the Bangladeshi community.

“We need to make assessments, we need to learn, and then we need to take action,” said Shamsul Haque, the Consul General of Bangladesh in New York, who spoke at a recent event, “Voices from the Community: Diabetes Among Bangladeshis in NYC”, hosted by the D.R.E.A.M. Project.

The year-old D.R.E.A.M. Project, which stands for Diabetes Research Education and Action for Minorities, is offering free six-month educational programs taught by community health workers that will show patients how to monitor their symptoms, modify their diets and use exercise to help stave off complications of the disease, such as blindness, limb amputations, and kidney failure. Through this outreach project, activists hope to spread the word to Bangladeshis who might otherwise have no warning of the danger lurking in their new lives.

The reasons for the accelerated spread of the diabetes within the Bangladeshi community are both genetic and environmental, though it’s the latter that most often accounts for the higher diabetes contraction rates seen in Asian Americans. While research continues on the subject, a preliminary finding seems to indicate that shifting from a diet that incorporated vegetables, rice and fish to a more Westernized, high fat-high calorie diet is a contributing factor.

Krittika Ghosh, a project coordinator at the D.R.E.A.M. Project, emphasized a related aspect of the dietary dimension; the relative availability of food that contributes to overeating.

“Food is more easily accessible here than in the home country,” she said. “Things that were very special occasion foods, like biryani and curries, those were not eaten every day back home.”

Nadia Islam, the Deputy Director of Research for the program, said that many of the newest arrivals become sedentary because they are forced to accept housing in poorer neighborhoods where crime might be an issue. Living in less safe neighborhoods leads many to stay indoors for longer periods of time, decreasing their level of physical activity.

She also cited the lack of health insurance and access to other resources as a reason for the lack of knowledge that many Bangladeshi Americans have about the disease.

“A large portion of the Bangladeshi community are working in low wage positions, non-standardized work like taxi driving, restaurant workers, domestic workers, so industries where there really are no access to benefit packages,” she said.

The situation with the taxi drivers displays just how much of an acute problem the insurance issue has become. Manmunul Huq, a community health worker for the D.R.E.A.M. Project and a founder of the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance, says that nearly 80 percent of the city’s cab drivers lack health care coverage and that over 20 percent of the city’s cab operators are Bangladeshi.

“Those guys are working 12 hours shifts, 7 days a week, keeping this city moving, but they don’t have any stable income, health benefits, time off benefits, nothing,” he said.

This lack of coverage prevents many drivers from receiving screening tests and treatment for the diabetes wreaking havoc on the Bangladeshi community

Huq and his fellow activist hope that through the D.R.E.A.M Project and other efforts that members of his community who moved to New York to start over will win their rights and achieve better outcomes for their lives.

Maureen Sullivan contributed reporting for this story. To find out more about the challenges facing other immigrant communities in Brooklyn, click here.

Mamnunul Huq is a co-founder of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and currently works as a Community Health Worker at the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health. He was born and raised in Chittagong, Bangladesh’s main port and second largest city and moved to the United States in the early 1990s. He is an advocate for the growing Bangladeshi community in the Borough Park and Kensington neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

New York City News Service: How did you start your career as an advocate?

Mamnunul Huq: I was actually involved with student politics when I was back home, so I know how to organize people. Once I finished my study back home, I graduated, and started to work at a bank, a financial corporation. By the time I came here, it was the Gulf Crisis, ‘90-’91; the first Bush invaded Iraq. At the time the economy is, whatever we see now. It was almost like that, at that time; it was a recession. I came and became frustrated at the beginning, because for three and a half months, I didn’t work. Because I did not get a banking job, I started to work in a store for a year or something like that.

It was a department of a store, and I became a manager, but then I quit at that time because I got my hack license. So I started driving a yellow cab, and once I started driving a yellow cab, I could see the problems in the industry: the drivers are exploited by some groups of people, like the garage owners and the TLC (Taxi and Limousine Commission). So I started to organize those people there, the taxi drivers, which are not necessarily just Bangladeshi. So I was one of the co-founders of the union [the New York Taxi Workers Alliance].

NYCNS: A large number of the city’s cab drivers are Bangladeshi, correct?

Huq: At that time, Bangladeshis were not the majority of drivers. Now, they are … over 30% of drivers, so they are the leaders now. So I am involved with a Bangladeshi cab drivers association and also the bigger one, which I helped co-found. A big portion of the drivers who live in Kensington and Borough Park are Bangladeshi.

NYCNS: What do you think is the biggest issue facing the city’s Bangladeshi community right now?

Huq: We do have a big problem with immigration because a lot of people are undocumented and who are living over here for a long period of time. They couldn’t see their family, couldn’t see their wife, children. They came over here and ended up, you know, couldn’t go back again because they’re waiting for hope. That is their hope, “I’ll be documented, I’ll be documented.” Because if they’re living here six years, seven years, ten years, there is a chance, if they can be documented, they can bring their wife, they can bring their children, they can bring their family members. So that’s why a lot of people hope and a lot of people are living with deep frustration. I meet with the people, and I do a lot of surveys in the health area, and once a week I go to the community to do the health survey, so I know that people are frustrated.

NYCNS: What’s another concern?

Huq: Another issue is health insurance. People don’t have the insurance, and in the taxi industry, like 80% of the drivers don’t have health insurance. Those guys are working 12 hours shifts, 7 days a week, keeping this city moving, but they don’t have any stable income, health benefits, time off benefits, nothing.

NYCNS: You mention health care. How did you end up getting involved with the Center for the Study of Asian American Health?

Huq: I ended up working on a project called DREAM, which is the Diabetes Research, Education and Action for Minorities (DREAM) Project. We work to help educate Bangladeshis about these issues.

So I was looking for a job, and they were hiring people. I saw the opening and applied because the criteria they were asking for, I thought I was the person who could get the job and would be better for the project. I knew they were looking for someone with education and knowledge about the community, someone who had good access to the media, community leaders and community organizations. Those things are part of the basic requirement, and I do have that because I am an advocate for people’s rights. I am an activist and an organizer and when they found me I was like the person they were looking for. And because in some parts of the Bangladeshi community, if you tell my name, a lot of people know me because I’ve been involved. I can organize very quickly. So they knew those things and they hired me.

NYCNS: What keeps you giving so much time to these causes?

Huq: This is part of my life. I always want to talk to other people and try to organize them for their rights and dignity. I believe it. People do have rights. It doesn’t matter who you are. You have rights as a human. Stuff like working for health. I believe that’s a fundamental right. Having health care. Workers should have rights.

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY MICHAEL PRESTON