In the wake of the disastrous media coverage now being given to GlaxoSmithKline over its diabetes drug, Avandia, Louise Story of The New York Times has taken a closer look at Glaxo's strategy for selling the drug. It appears that a central pillar of that strategy was pitching the drug extra hard to the African American community. Seems Glaxo was faster and savvier than its competitors to recognize what seems sort of obvious in retrospect: African Americans suffer from Type 2 diabetes at a rate disproportionately high compared with that of the general population, so reaching out to that community could be lucrative for drug manufacturers. Glaxo has been targeting diabetic African Americans in a glossy and carefully crafted ad campaign for some years now.

Della Reese (pictured) was Glaxo's big star for the campaign. Remember Reese? The Touched by an Angel actress and jazz singer was too perfect. Black diabetic? Check! Celebrity status? Check! Grandmotherly yet sassy? Check! Click here to see a sample of the ad literature and images featuring Reese.

The question that industry analysts are now asking is this: will Glaxo's strategy now backfire in the wake of the Avandia scandal? That is, will black diabetics lose trust in the company name over this controversy? Times journalist Story speculates that this could indeed happen; that African Americans have been ill-used before by drug companies and scientists, most famously in the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Regardless, this is a sector of the market Glaxo can't afford to lose.

African American churches are "the central hub in the social fabric of the African American community." So says Brian Letourneau, director of the Durham County Health Department in North Carolina. It's hoped that understanding this fact - and working with and through local churches (not around them) - will help the medical community to improve the lot of the area's black residents, many of whom suffer from Type 2 diabetes.

Letourneau's agency and the Department of Community and Family Medicine has begun working with experts from Duke School of Medicine and local black churches to reach out to African Americans, many of whom suffer from poor health and have limited access to health care services. The initiative, funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health, is called the African-American Health Improvement Partnership (AAHIP). The collaboration makes a lot of sense because, as Duke's campus paper The Chronicle reports, black churches are no strangers to dealing with difficult social problems.

The program will have Duke faculty members brought out to talk about healthy lifestyles: what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, why it's important for preventing or controlling diseases like Type 2 diabetes, and about the kind of medical care required to manage diabetes. Duke professor Sherman James (pictured) told The Chronicle, "Diabetes in on the rise across the country, driven largely by increasing obesity and sedentary lifestyles. Poor people of color are among the most severely affected groups, and of course that includes many African Americans. Our goal...is to develop a project that is not only scientifically sound, but culturally appropriate and sustainable."