Possible Stakeholders...

There are several stakeholders that play a role within developing an intervention for diabetes in the African American community. It is important to recognize who the stakeholders are within the area that you plan to implement a program because those are the people who will have to be convinced or approached for support and resources in the event that the program you are implementing will affect them.

        Possible stakeholders include the population that obviously is going to be directly impacted: African Americans. Besides this, there are other organizations and persons to be considered. There can be food suppliers and grocery stores, local/state/government contracting and government budgets (fiscal analysts or those who control the budget of the area), health insurance companies, hospitals and physicians.

The beginnings of some possible interventions for this problem for example could be the development of more efficient grocery stores within urban areas to decrease the amount of food deserts. Stakeholders for this intervention include the local or state governments who have to make room in their budgets to build more grocery stores. They would also have to provide staff and training for these new stores. You would need the cooperation of those individuals who live in the area where the stores are planned to be built, especially in the case that residents might need to be displaced, unless the stores were built on vacant lots or other places. In this case, there may be opposition from the local governments, especially if there budget spending is limited and they would like to put the money they have towards other areas that they deem more necessary. This can be addressed by ensuring some type of payback towards the government for each grocery store that is established.

Another intervention is to provide more fresh and healthy foods for lower prices. Stakeholders in this intervention could be farmers and those who grow the produce, the companies who manufacture the produce, the stores that distribute and sell the produce, and even the government because of the decrease in profits (i.e. taxes) that will be incurred from the lower prices. There may be opposition from farmers because there income will be impacted by the lower costs. Perhaps there could be an incentive for farmers who participate in the intervention over a certain amount of time or how much of their products were purchased in consumer markets.

The stakeholders will obviously have many concerns about what the implementations might mean to them in the long run. For many of the stakeholders, the loss of money is a huge factor in whether they will comply or negotiate with the implementation plans. They may also be concerned about how their participation looks to other groups and organizations that they support. Even more important, they may be concerned about what they may gain from negotiating with the task force.