If you are at risk of type 2 diabetes, our Diabetes Prevention Program can help you prevent or delay diabetes and learn to:
Black Women's Health Imperative offers Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life (CYL2)TM, a support system culturally tailored for Black women to prevent or manage type 2 diabetes.
Reduce Chronic Stress
Manage mid-life weight
Respond to food triggers
Get support for lifestyle shift
Understand role of weights meds
If you already have type 2 diabetes, our Diabetes Self-Management Support Program (DSMSP) can help you with:
Monitoring blood glucose
Building a team of support
Managing medications
Preventing complications
Making lifestyle shift
Did you know?
One of the most important risk factors for diabetes and diabetes complications is obesity. If you are taking weight loss medication, have had bariatric surgery, or are planning to, our programs will support you in making lifestyle shifts necessary to maintain the weight loss.
BWHI created the first CDC-approved culturally tailored lifestyle change curriculum for Black women ,helping them lose weight to prevent type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. And you can take the class virtually. Just download our App.
Topics include:
- Chronic Stress, Intersectionality, and Lived Experience
- Practice Self-Care for Life!
- Aging Like a Fine Wine: Achieving Weight Goals During Mid-Life
- More About Aging Life a Fine Wine: Hormones and Menopause
- What’s Money Got to Do With It?
Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life. (CYL2) is a 12-month program that equips participants with the tools needed to prevent type 2 diabetes. The program also reduces participant risk for other chronic conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol as participants transform their health. People with prediabetes (a.k.a. borderline diabetes) can prevent disease progression by losing at least 5% to 7% of their starting weight.
HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT:
Ready to Reduce Your Risk?
- Access to a Lifestyle Coach to support your journey
- Community: Become a part of our wellness community and make positive health changes while preventing chronic illness.
- Support from other participants as you transform your relationship with food
- Personalized education: learn what triggers your eating, how your thoughts affect your behavior, and how to replace negative habits with positive ones.
- Personal health expertise: understand how chronic stress increases the risk of weight gain and keeps us from losing weight.
- Access tips to improve your self-care and stress management practices.
Is CYL2 the Right Fit For You?
Are you ready to experience your best life, facing challenges with borderline diabetes or your weight? Has a medical provider told you that you need to take action to improve your health and prevent a chronic illness? If so, CYL2 may be perfect for you. To enroll in CYL2, you must be 18 and older and have a BMI of 25 or more.
Our program may be the right fit if you have:
Already been told you have prediabetes. If that’s true:
Our program may be the right fit if you have or had gestational diabetes when you were pregnant. If that’s true:
PREVENTION
Take Our Online Risk Test Today!
Descargue la Prueba de Riesgo de la Prediabetes
CYL2 App
Have you downloaded the BWHI App? The Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI) is working to make optimal health and well-being a reality for all black women and girls. CYL² is a lifestyle change program that utilizes our culturally tailored adaptation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) approved curriculum to help prevent type 2 diabetes (and other preventable chronic conditions). The program includes a lifestyle coach who can provide the education and support needed to replace unhealthy habits with healthy ones that lead to a path of long-term success. Explore the app’s features and learn problem-solving skills and coping strategies for overcoming barriers to lifestyle changes.
Download on the App Store
Download on Google Play
High-Touch Coaching
We understand, value, and respect the lived experience of Black women and Latinas, as well as the influence that experience has on every thought they have, every change they are faced with, and every decision they make.
Along with their own self-awareness, our high-touch coaches are empathetic, compassionate, and share many of the lived experiences of their participants. We help participants get to the heart of what is required for lifestyle change by helping them understand how their lived experiences contribute to their current behavior, to what got them to where they are, and how to turn that knowledge into positive behavior change. our coaches do not pressure participants to change who they are but to realize they are worthy and capable, and because they are, they have everything they need to meet their goals.
Our Impact
"What I’ve learned in this program is I CAN DO IT! I can control my appetite and what I eat. I’ve made the necessary changes to prolong my life. I’ve changed my lifestyle and I am making better choices. I’ve decided to live, really live abundantly."
Aronese
CYL2 Participant
Maryland
3400+
PARTICIPANTS
18
PARTNERS
13
CITIES/STATES
88%
RETENTION
Educate – Demonstrate – Guide – Empower
Visit our lifestyle change program partners’ websites by clicking the logos below. If you do not see your location listed, please visit the CDC website to find a program near you! Please note that with COVID-19, many programs have moved to a virtual model.
*FOUNDING MEMBERS
EDGE PROGRAM PROVIDER NETWORK
2022 National Diabetes Agenda
This policy agenda introduces our recommendations for addressing T2D. For example, screening for prediabetes should be added as a component of the annual well-woman visit for early detection and prevention, and it should be covered by private and public health insurers. Fasting blood sugar and hemoglobin A1c tests should be covered for anyone who is overweight, has a family history of T2D, has had gestational diabetes, or has other risk factors for diabetes.
BWHI also recommends policies that require doctors to screen and refer those who are eligible to federally recognized lifestyle change programs like CYL2. We know that community-based organizations play a critical role in program delivery and provide trusted environments for people most at risk for T2D. Proposed legislation targeting sugary beverages and food deserts will reduce unhealthy diet choices, increase the consumption of nutritious foods, and reduce the likelihood of diabetes. Public health efforts to increase Black women’s participation in clinical trials will help produce treatments with higher efficacy for those living with diabetes.
BWHI believes that these and other recommendations presented in this policy agenda are steps toward a healthier, more equitable America.