Coos Bay resident Richanne Jennings looks healthy and happy. Her affable disposition and career in the health care profession belie the fact that she is, like many Americans, at risk for a debilitating disease.

Jennings, a member of the Chippewa Tribe, is one of the first volunteers to go through the screening process for a new diabetes prevention program begun by the Coquille Indian Tribe and numerous tribal groups throughout the United States.

The Coquille Tribe is receiving one-third of a $2.2 million grant to fund the diabetes prevention program. The Southern Oregon Tribal Diabetes Prevention Consortium, comprising members of the Coquille Indian Tribe, The Klamath Tribe and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians began work on the program in October of 2004.

The grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will allow the consortium to help prevent type 2 diabetes among its people. The consortium is one of 35 tribal groups in the United States -among the more than 500 eligible federally recognized tribes - to initiate a diabetes prevention program.

The national program was established to counteract the growing epidemic of diabetes among Native Americans. According to Consortium Program Director Susan M. Ferris, American Indians are at least twice as likely as other groups to develop the disease.

“The cost for diabetes health care in 2002 was $132 billion. It's around $150 billion now,” Ferris said. “We all better roll up our sleeves and get informed.”

Locally, the program will involve 144 pre-diabetic people, divided equally among the three tribes. Volunteers from the program must be at least 18 years old and members of any federally recognized tribe. Volunteers are beginning to be screened, and the program organizers are seeking more.

Volunteers who are pre-diabetic and who wish to participate in the program are asked to make a three-year commitment.

Jennings said she is willing to make that commitment for health reasons, and she is ready to make the personal changes necessary to prevent developing diabetes.

“It's a good lifestyle change,” she said. “I think it will be more beneficial to me.”

The overriding goals of the program are for participants to lose 7 percent of their body weight and to get 150 minutes of exercise per week.

“It's hard, but it's not unattainable,” said Diabetes Educator Kelle Little, who is heading up the program for the Coquille Tribe.

Volunteers taking part in the program at the Coquille Indian Tribe Community Health Center will have extensive education, mentoring, coaching and other support from Health Education Coordinator Gail Accinelli. She said the volunteers will meet in eight-member groups for 16-week classes. The same procedure and curriculum, focused on nutrition and exercise, will be used by each of the three tribes.

As a lifestyle coach, Accinelli also will meet with volunteers individually and work to help them form good habits. She plans to work with the volunteers to help them set personal goals

“One of the hardest challenges is to keep people motivated,” she said. “I think people have to understand that when you change your lifestyle, you don't have to change what you eat. You just have to maybe cook it in a different way.”

Little and Accinelli, along with Family Nurse Practitioner Pat Dudas, make up the team heading up the project for the Coquille Tribe. They spent the first year planning for the program with representatives from other participating tribes. Little said the program is based on a National Institutes of Health diabetes prevention program, but has been adapted to reflect the cultures and meet the needs of Native American populations.

“Variation among cultures and levels of assimilation are huge,” she said. “Food variations are very individualized.”

The consortium further adapted the program to fit food choices and cultural differences of local tribes.

The program is free to volunteers. All of the supplies, including food vouchers to help participants make good food choices, will be covered. Tribes don't have to provide matching funds to receive the grant, but are responsible for program director and administrator salaries and medical support.

“The Coquille Tribe has definitely made a commitment, as have all the other tribes,” said Little.

Detailed records will be kept of volunteers' progress and submitted confidentially every two weeks to the University of Colorado, which has a contract with Indian Health Services to collect and analyze the data. The results will be presented to Congress at the end of the five-year project. If successful, the program could be expanded to help other populations of Native Americans.

“Our hope is that we can prove that diabetes can be prevented,” said Little.

For more information, those interested can call Ferris, at (541) 672-9405; or the Coquille Indian Tribe Community Health Center, at 888-9494.