According to a new report, half of all Americans have either pre-diabetes or diabetes, but experts are saying this could be the good news.

Researchers are saying that after two decades of linear growth, it could mean that the prevalence of diabetes is finally beginning to plateau in the U.S. The authors who published a paper on Tuesday in JAMA said that their findings were consistent with other studies that found the percentage of people with diagnosed diabetes was firmly steady between 2008 and 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Although obesity and Type 2 diabetes remain major clinical and public health problems in the United States, the current data provide a glimmer of hope,” wrote William Herman and Amy Rothberg of the University of Michigan in an article accompanying the paper.

Although they were not part of the recent study, Herman and Rothberg said the study suggests the implementation of food, nutrition and physical activity policies and regulations and other ideas to curb obesity and diabetes have begun to pay off.

“Progress has been made, but expanded and sustained efforts will be required,” they wrote.

The study gathered information from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from reports between 2011 and 2012 where they found 12 percent and 14 percent of Americans had diabetes which was a number that had remained strong since 2008.

They also discovered that the number of people who had diabetes without knowing so had dropped from 40 percent to 31 percent by 2012. Although a steady drop, the numbers were not consistent across all racial and ethnic groups.

They found that more Mexican Americans went undiagnosed compared to white and black counterparts. The researchers of the study said that this could be because a lower number of Mexican Americans had health insurance which inevitably led to a lower access to proper healthcare. Yet still, the study revealed that Asian people were the most likely over any other racial group to have undiagnosed diabetes.