Minority ethnic groups - understanding diet, weight and type 2 diabetes: scoping review

Limitations

The aim of this scoping review was to provide an overview of evidence to support understanding of Ethnic Minorities diet, weight and type 2 diabetes, through identifying key sources of information and themes existing around this topic. It does not claim to be systematic or comprehensive. It could be used to inform the specification of future systematic reviews on the subthemes presented in this report and as a prompt for discussion.

There are some issues that were only briefly addressed in this report but could be explored further. These include the complications of diabetes, whether there are differences across different types of ME groups and why; the numbers of people accessing type 2 diabetes prevention and treatment programmes, including statistics by ethnicity; and whether misdiagnosis is more common in ME groups than in white populations.

Furthermore, this scoping work did not include data and research on physical activity in ME groups. This is, however, an important topic both in relation to weight and diabetes care, and should be taken into account in policy discussion and future work.