This site tells about a friendly diabetes support group in Hilo, Hawai‘i, started by the Bay Clinic, Inc., a Federally Certified Community Health Center. Diabetes patients are working together with friends and health providers to support themselves in a healthy lifestyle. Its participants think that groups like it can help bring down soaring health care costs because people become motivated to help themselves. "Self-management" is the new term to describe what is going on.

Here is the poster for the April 7, 2010 Bay Clinic event at Wailoa River State Park in Hilo.

First Wednesdays in the Park
The group likes to become involved in community events that have a health theme. We pushed staff to start having regular monthly meetings in a local park after Stacy Haumea, the Director of Diabetes Education for the Bay Clinic, had scheduled a picnic there one time.  It worked out so well that we kept lobbying staff until they finally put it on a regular schedule. The first Wednesday of each month all the Bay Clinic's diabetes class and support groups are invited to meet at beautiful Wailoa River State Park from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The public is invited to these meetings.
• We have a speaker of general interest. Music groups or community drumming sometimes. Last month we learned how to make raised bed platforms out of discarded wood pallets. Another month Kim Hoffman told us about her and her husband’s project for one month in each of the past two years to eat nothing but locally raised food – this is not an easy project. Another time we learned about traditional Hawaiian medicines.
• A regular class about diabetes that Stacy Haumea has started offering to the general public, one of the series of ten classes that is part of the series only available for Bay Clinic patients.
• There is exercise involving stretching and Tai Chi Chih routines led by by Hannah Hedrick, an inspirational 70-year-old woman who has had two hips and a femur replaced. She also just happens to have worked for former Surgeon General Everett Koop and is a national authority on self help groups. There are usually health screenings available.
• Then we have a delicious potluck with everyone bringing diabetes-friendly dishes. The dishes available prove that you can eat delicious food even if you have to cut down on sugar and fat and salt.

A formal study of the Bay Clinic's diabetes program is described here: BayClinicProgramStudy.html. The complete study can be obtained from the Bay Clinic. To obtain the two Program Study DVDs they have, send $15 for the Diabetes Program DVDs to the Bay Clinic, 224 Haili Street, Suite B, Hilo, HI 96720, Attention Monica Adams. This will cover disc duplication, labeling, handling and postage.

One Warrior's Story - Tom Whitney
I learned I have Type 2 diabetes in 2007 when I went to the Bay Clinic in Hilo, Hawaii, about an upper respiratory problem: I was coughing frequently and stuffed up. The doctor had some blood tests done and I learned two things: that my blood sugar was high and I was allergic to many plants endemic to Hawaii. For the allergy I was prescribed loratadine, which taken daily has stopped that problem.
   After a repeat blood test, including an A1C test, that showed 6.9%, the physician said I was right on the verge of having diabetes. He recommended that I take the series of classes offered there at the clinic. I signed up, took ten classes and have been attending the support group there ever since. The health industry term for what we were involved in is Diabetes Self-Management Education. Rather than seeing a doctor for six or twelve minutes and having them tell me what to do, I can see health professional every week for years as I learn to manage my symptoms. It is kind of ironical: at the Bay Clinic you learn how to manage the diabetes yourself, Self-Management, yet you can see health providers whenever you want if you are a Bay Clinic patient. I described my experience with the classes in Whoa! Diabetes! available as a PDF there in the left column.  As the support group continued, I produced another article about all the delicious foods being created in the potlucks the group was constantly doing.  
    I joined the Warriors Against Diabetes, a long-term diabetes support group that
has been meeting together since 2005 when the first of the Bay Clinic’s class series was completed. I have been participating for two years. The dozen members meet every week on Tuesdays at the Bay Clinic office in Hilo. We check our numbers for blood pressure, blood sugar and weight and then pay attention to that week’s activity. The group has helped me lose about thirty pounds and bring my diabetes symptoms under control.  We discuss a topic that someone has brought to the group, or we might  plan some community events, or go help put one on. We will look at recent videos about diabetes.  We just about always have some delicious snacks or main dishes that someone has created that is diabetes friendly. We trade recipes a lot.
   The group's diabetes symptoms are under control.  A survey of the group’s A1C percentage in September 2009 of people's blood cells that have glucose attached to them is 6.42% compared with 8.11 % when they started. Normal range is 4 to 6% and the target for diabetics is 7% or less.   
   If we need to see a health provider we can do that after the support group meeting, so I have no complaints about not being able to see my doctor when I need to! They use the term health provider to include the Advanced Practice Registered Nurses and Physician Assistants who can provide primary care and prescribe medicines pretty much as physicians do. As a former Navy Hospital Corpsman, the fact that they use people efficiently like this in this region that lacks very many doctors, makes a lot of sense to me. Those health providers and Stacy Haumea, who is a Nutritionist and Registered Dietitian and recently became a Certified Diabetes Educator, are running the program. A physician is available if needed, but is mostly invisible.
   The photograph at the right on the the top of this page is of a group of people from the Marshall Islands who also participate in their own long-term support group. They are singing a song in Marshallese about making healthy food choices. They are having fun, and that is something we enjoy doing. Out attitude is that we all have the terminal disease called life, so we might as well "Live the sweet life healthy, and have some fun doing it!"   

Here is an article about our group that appeared in the Hawaii AlohaCare Magazine recently.s appropriately behind the

outlines of the letters as shown in the vegetable letters you see here.

Some good diabetes-friendly recipes

Big Island Weekly Nov. 21, 2007.pdf