Diabetes curriculum launched

By DIANE COCHRAN
Of The Gazette Staff

A diabetes-prevention curriculum designed and tested on American Indian reservations, including sites in Montana, could be adopted by more than 1,000 schools across the nation.

Developers of the K-12 curriculum, called "Health is Life in Balance," hope to see it used in every U.S. school with a majority American Indian population.

After seven years of development, the diabetes curriculum becomes available today. There is no charge to school systems that adopt it.

A ceremony to launch the curriculum was scheduled to take place this morning at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Diabetes has surged among Americans of all ethnicities, but its prevalence is especially high among native groups.

Almost 17 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native adults have Type 2 diabetes, which is closely linked to obesity, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Only 8 percent of people across all ethnic groups have Type 2 diabetes.

In 2000, a national tribal leaders organization recognized the growing problem and challenged government health agencies to address it.

Three federal agencies - the Indian Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NIH - responded by asking tribal groups to design a school curriculum that would teach children how to prevent and manage diabetes.

Eight tribal colleges, including Stone Child in Rocky Boy and Fort Peck Community College in Poplar, won funding to work on the program, whose total cost was about $12 million.

As units of the culturally sensitive curriculum were completed, they were tested at schools in 12 states, including Montana.

"It's been developed through tribal communities," said Sanford Garfield, an NIH senior adviser in biometry and behavior research who worked on the project. "This is a 100 percent American Indian developed piece of curriculum."

The project had three goals, said Dr. Lawrence Agodoa, director of NIH's Office of Minority Health Research Coordination.

One was education. The others were to reduce the prevalence of diabetes and to attract American Indian children to careers in science.

The government is still deciding how to measure success, Agodoa said.

"We expect children will know much more about diabetes - more about how to prevent it and how to manage it," he said.

Contact Diane Cochran at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or 657-1287.