ORIGINAL PAPER Disparities in Self-Reported Diabetes Mellitus among Arab, Chaldean, and Black Americans in Southeast Michigan Hikmet Jamil Æ Monty Fakhouri Æ Florence Dallo Æ Thomas Templin Æ Radwan Khoury Æ Haifa Fakhouri Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract Diabetes mellitus is an important public health problem that disproportionately affects minorities. Using a cross sectional, convenience sample, we estimated the prevalence of self-reported diabetes for Whites (n = 212), Arabs (n = 1,303), Chaldeans (n = 828), and Blacks (n = 789) in southeast Michigan. In addition, using a logistic regression model, we estimated odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the association between eth- nicity and diabetes before and after adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic status, health care, chronic conditions, and health behavior variables. The overall age- and sex-adjusted prevalence of diabetes was 7.0%. Esti- mates were highest for Blacks (8.0%) followed by Arabs and Whites (7.0% for each group) and Chaldeans (6.0%). In the fully adjusted model, the association between eth- nicity and diabetes was not statistically significant. Future studies should collect more detailed socioeconomic status, acculturation and health behavior information, which are factors that may affect the relationship between race/ ethnicity and diabetes. Keywords Arab Á Chaldean Á Black Á Diabetes Introduction Diabetes mellitus is one of the major modifiable risk fac- tors for coronary heart disease [1–4], stroke [5, 6], and peripheral vascular disease [7, 8]. The prevalence of dia- betes (diagnosed and undiagnosed) is approximately 9.3% in the United States population [9]. It is higher for some minority groups, such as Blacks (13.3%) compared to Whites (8.5%) [9]. Although Whites are usually used as the reference category for health comparisons in the US, Whites are a heterogeneous group [10]. According to the Office of Management and Budget, Whites comprise per- sons having origins in Europe, North America, or the Middle East [10]. Therefore, using Whites as the reference group may miss variations in the health status of other groups within the White category, such as individuals from the Middle East. Because of the homogeneity assumption assigned to the White category, little attention has been paid to the health status of subgroups within the White category. For exam- ple, Arabs/Chaldeans, a subgroup within the White category, may exhibit better or worse health outcomes compared to Whites as a whole [11–18]. The prevalence of self-reported diabetes ranged from 7.0% to 23.0% among Arabs [11, 14–16, 18] and 17.1% [17] among Chaldeans. These studies were conducted in Michigan, because Michigan is home to the highest concentration of Arab and Chaldean Americans in any state (approximately 100,000) [19–21]. Findings from these studies are crucial in helping H. Jamil Á M. Fakhouri Á R. Khoury Á H. Fakhouri Arab American & Chaldean Council, 28551 Southfield Road, Lathrup Village, MI 48076, USA H. Jamil (&) Department of Family Medicine & Public Health Sciences, Wayne State University, 3800 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48201, USA e-mail: hjamil@med.wayne.edu F. Dallo School of Public Health, Dallas Regional Campus, University of Texas, 6011 Harry Hines Blvd., V8.112, Dallas, TX 75390, USA T. Templin College of Nursing, Wayne State University, 5557 Cass Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202, USA 123 J Immigrant Minority Health DOI 10.1007/s10903-007-9108-0