For South Asian adults in the United States
Metabolic risk guides for South Asian adults
Type 2 diabetes turns up more often, and at lower body weights, in South Asian adults than the standard charts assume. Sehat explains what the published research and the guidelines actually say, with every figure cited.
What Sehat is today: free, cited guides and a free waitlist. Nothing is prescribed, nothing is sold, no test is ordered, and no care is delivered. There is no clinical team yet. Programs open at launch, and launch depends on the two roles described below.
The measurement problem
The chart most clinics use was not built on this population
In the MASALA and MESA studies, US South Asian adults aged 44 to 84 had an age-adjusted type 2 diabetes prevalence of 23%, against 6% in white adults, 18% in African American adults, 17% in Latino adults and 13% in Chinese American adults.[1]
The guidelines already reflect part of this. The American Diabetes Association says testing should be considered at a BMI of 25 or higher, or 23 or higher in people of Asian ancestry, when at least one other risk factor is present.[2] A 2004 WHO expert consultation set potential public health action points at BMI values of 23.0 and 27.5, and concluded that substantial risk exists below the usual overweight cut-off of 25.[5]
What that adds up to in a waiting room is simple. A person can sit inside a normal BMI band, be told their numbers look fine, and never be offered the test that the guidelines already point toward.
You were measured against a standard that was built on somebody else.
That is the gap Sehat exists to close, and the honest version of the offer is the assessment, not a prescription. Getting measured against the right threshold is a real thing to fix. Promising what a clinician would then do about it is not ours to promise.
23%
age-adjusted type 2 diabetes prevalence among US South Asian adults aged 44 to 84, against 6% in white adults in the same analysis.[1]
23
the BMI at which the ADA says testing should be considered for people of Asian ancestry with one or more risk factors, against 25 otherwise.[2]
24 vs 30
in an Ontario, Canada cohort of 59,824 adults, a BMI of 24 in South Asian adults carried the diabetes incidence rate of a BMI of 30 in white adults. Canadian data.[3]
115M
US adults have prediabetes, and CDC states there are usually no signs, so most people who have it do not know.[7]
Read the numbers correctly
Higher risk is not a fixed outcome
A prevalence figure describes a population. It is not a forecast for the person reading it, and a 23% prevalence means most people in that group did not have the condition.[1]
The mechanism is also not settled. When Flowers and colleagues added body composition measures to the MASALA and MESA analyses, they did not find strong evidence that body composition explains the difference in risk.[4] Anyone selling you a tidy single-cause story about your body is ahead of the evidence.
So the useful response is not fatalism and not a lecture about your food. It is getting measured against the right threshold, earlier, and knowing which factors the guidelines actually list.
Who this is written for
- Adults with family roots in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal or Bhutan, first generation and later. That is many countries, many faiths, many languages and many kitchens, and this site does not assume one of each.
- People who want the citation, not the claim. Every figure here links to the source it came from, and pages say plainly when a number does not exist.
- People who already have a clinician. Nothing here replaces that relationship. The guides are written to make one appointment go better.
Before anything opens
The condition on launching Sehat
The condition on launching
Sehat launches care only with South Asian clinical leadership
Two roles have to be filled before Sehat treats anyone: a South Asian co-founder with standing in the community, holding real equity, and a South Asian endocrinologist or cardiologist as chief medical officer. Both, not one. That search is open right now, and neither role is filled.
This is not a values statement bolted onto a finished company. A brand that tells this audience the standard care model did not see them, and then runs a general prescriber network behind a name in their language, is doing the same thing again. The audience includes a large number of clinicians and the relatives of clinicians, and they will notice.
So the honest state of things is this: today Sehat is a set of free guides with citations, and a waitlist. There are no clinicians here, no advisory board, no medical reviewer, and no named team. When those names are real, they will appear on this site with their own credentials and their own equity, and not before.
Where we stand, plainly
What we will and will not claim
No invented anything
No testimonials, no member counts, no stock photographs, no illustrated patients. Every number on this site carries a citation to a public source, listed at the bottom of the page it appears on.
No names until the names are real
There is no clinical team here, no advisory board and no medical reviewer. You will not find a headshot or a set of letters after a name on this site, because there is nobody to put there yet.
Group data, stated as group data
Prevalence and hazard figures describe populations, not people. Where a number was measured in Canada, the UK, or in adolescents, the page says so in the same sentence, every time.
Screening is the offer, not a prescription
Guidelines set a lower threshold for starting a conversation about testing. A threshold for testing is not a threshold for treatment, and we will not advertise it as one.
Sources cited on this page
- [1] Kanaya AM, Herrington D, Vittinghoff E, et al., Understanding the high prevalence of diabetes in U.S. South Asians compared with four racial/ethnic groups, the MASALA and MESA studies, Diabetes Care (2014). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24705613/. Accessed 2026-08-06.
- [2] American Diabetes Association, 2. Diagnosis and Classification of Diabetes, Standards of Care in Diabetes 2026, Diabetes Care 49(Suppl 1):S27. https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/49/Supplement_1/S27/163926/2-Diagnosis-and-Classification-of-Diabetes. Accessed 2026-08-06.
- [3] Chiu M, Austin PC, Manuel DG, Shah BR, Tu JV, Deriving ethnic-specific BMI cutoff points for assessing diabetes risk, Diabetes Care (2011), an Ontario, Canada cohort. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21680722/. Accessed 2026-08-06.
- [4] Flowers E, Lin F, Kandula NR, et al., Body Composition and Diabetes Risk in South Asians, Findings From the MASALA and MESA Studies, Diabetes Care (2019). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30796111/. Accessed 2026-08-06.
- [5] WHO expert consultation, Appropriate body-mass index for Asian populations and its implications for policy and intervention strategies, Lancet (2004). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14726171/. Accessed 2026-08-06.
- [6] Volgman AS, Palaniappan LS, Aggarwal NT, et al., Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease in South Asians in the United States, A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association, Circulation (2018). https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000580. Accessed 2026-08-06.
- [7] CDC, Preventing Type 2 Diabetes. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/prevention-type-2/index.html. Accessed 2026-08-06.
The 2018 American Heart Association scientific statement on atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in South Asians is listed because it is cited on the heart disease guide; it reports higher proportional mortality from that disease in South Asians than in other Asian groups and non-Hispanic whites, without a single US risk ratio we could quote here.
Guides now, programs at launch
The guides are free. The waitlist is free too.
Joining the waitlist is not a purchase and not a signup for care. It sets the order people are contacted in if Sehat launches, and launch depends on filling two clinical leadership roles that are still open.