The San Angelo Diabetes Coalition hopes to bring awareness and outreach to the diabetes epidemic going on across Tom Green County.
"Probably about 30% of our patients had diabetes today," said Dr. Michael Blanc, director of the Community Heart and Vascular Center at San Angelo Medical Center.
Dr. Blanc has seen firsthand that the number of people with diabetes is growing.
"About 1 in 10 people will have diabetes." Dr. Blanc said.
In efforts to combat the issue, five local organizations have partnered together to create the San Angelo Diabetes Coalition. They are:
San Angelo Health Foundation
Angelo State University
Esperanza Medical Center
San Angelo Community Medical Center
San Angelo Medical Center
"They wanted to make a difference in the community in a medical sense," said Dr. Robert Patyrak, a retired Pediatrician.
The idea all started when the San Angelo Health Foundation conducted a survey in 2015. They surveyed poor and extremely poor populations and came up with three top health needs in the community.
"There is an estimate by 2040, up to 25 percent of adults in Tom Green County will have Type 2 diabetes if we don't intervene," Dr. Patyrak said.
Dr. Patyrak became apart of the coalition because he sees diabetes as a growing problem.
"Whether you are poor or rich, this is a problem city-wide and country-wide," said Dr. Patyrak.
Leslie Hines has a grandmother who has diabetes. As the program coordinator, she and her staff hope that through outreach and screenings, they can reach those populations that suffer from diabetes.
"We are going make sure we are going out to them instead of them coming to us," said Leslie Hines, Blue Cross- Blue Shield program coordinator.
The coalition will have their first screening in May. As far as the other two issues that came up on the survey, they say if they see success from this, they may tackle one of the other issues.