Naples symposium educates public living with diabetes

The Centers For Disease Control reports nearly one in three Americans are living with diabetes or pre-diabetes, which accounts for more than 100 million people. And that trend holds true in Southwest Florida, so a group in Naples is responding to the troubling health trend.

Various health groups and agencies worked together to organize an inaugural Diabetes Wellness Activity Symposium in Naples.

The timing is critical in Southwest Florida. According to the Florida Department of Health, in 2016, the percentages of people who have been told they have pre-diabetes are approaching 10% in Charlotte County, 8% in Lee County and nearly 11% here in Collier County.

“I said, ‘Please, God. Don’t let this be real,” Jo Ellen Condon said.

Condon remembers the day she got her Type 1 diabetes diagnosis 41 years ago. But she also had another line of thought in her prayer.

“Let me use it to help people,” Condon said.

Now, she’s a certified diabetes educator taking part in the inaugural diabetes symposium.

“I have family that are diabetic. I have dear friends who are diabetic,” said Chuck Gillespie, CEO of the National Wellness Institute. “I think the No. 1 gap we’re running into today is the coordination of care.

Gillespie along with leaders from YMCA, American Diabetes Association, Diabetes Alliance Network and nonprofit Help A Diabetic Child are working to get more resources into communities.

“Let’s start here in Naples; let’s go statewide,” Gillespie said. “And then look at other areas.”

The groups are developing programs to educate patients on living their lives despite having Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, and they start with cost.

“It was so frustrating when you would educate someone who didn’t have the resources to get the supplies they needed,” Condon said.

Insulin and other diabetes medication is expensive. Some patients go bankrupt or die paying for their treatment.

But, with the right education, many people can control diabetes.

“Knowing how to self manage diabetes is not second nature,” Condon said.

The symposium continues tomorrow. For more information, visit Florida’s Paradise Coast website.

After it wraps up, the groups plan to start a pilot program at the South Collier YMCA on Marco Island to improve quality of life for patients.