I'm Hannah Orlowski at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. I'm the director of the Diabetes Care Center. One of the things that we're really working on right now is really trying to come up with programs that can actually get children more involved, particularly the teen years. We're trying to get all those involved. And one of the staggering statistics says, "Anybody that is born in the year 2000 and on in the United States, one third of those will have diabetes."

That's an amazing number when you think about it today, 33 percent, the burden that we already placed on our children just in the last 11 years. The numbers are even more incredible when you go into different populations like African‑American and the Hispanic population. Their numbers are up to 40 to 50 percent. Some as high as 58 percent of the children that are already 11 today will have diabetes and that's what we have to try to prevent.

Ways that we are going to do that is by really trying to get programs that will encourage them and show them how to do programs, physical activity that is not strenuous on the body and that anybody can do whether they are small or medium or large.

At our center, we are very fortunate to have a registered dietician that is also a CDE that has actually has very special certifications in childhood obesity and adult obesity. She is actually specifically trained to work with those different populations and to teach them more importantly how to motivate them to want to make changes.

It is definitely a family event. You can't just teach the child. You have to get the whole family incorporated. We try to get the grandparents if we can, uncles anybody that has any responsibility for that child. We get them involved in the care so that it is not just all the burden put on to the child.

If you have concerns or know someone who needs any help at all, you can always call the Diabetes Care Center at 312‑1392.