When Leo Moore was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago, her doctor sent her off with a prescription and the admonishment that she should eat a diabetic diet — but no information on what such a diet would entail.

Unfortunately, that story is all too common in Swain County, which has the state’s fourth-highest diabetes mortality rate. But an educational program that has grown out of a partnership between North Carolina Cooperative Extension and the county’s health department is designed to help patients gain the nutrition information they need to get their health under control.

The four-week program uses Extension’s Out for Lunch model, bringing participants together to learn about nutrition and wellness while sharing a meal and focusing on the special concerns of people with diabetes.

The program has been so successful that adjoining counties are considering starting similar programs, and the North Carolina Diabetes Advisory Council has expressed interest in using the program as a model. Part of the success stems from class instructor Freddie Breedlove’s focus on creating an environment that is at once informative and supportive.

“Some of the people who come are scared — they’ve just been diagnosed, and they feel like it’s a death sentence,” she says. “I try to make the class a lot of fun. And what we see grow out of it is self-esteem and a sort of group spirit.”

Her efforts are bolstered by the county’s Extension Family and Consumer Education agent, Jessica Roberson, and by Regina Howell, a health department nurse. Roberson shares recipes designed to be appealing, easy-to-prepare and suitable for people with diabetes, and Howell talks about such medical aspects of diabetes as foot care, nerve damage and dental, eye and kidney problems.

So far, the program has been offered twice, once during the lunch hour and once at night. It has attracted a cross-section of Swain County residents, including men and women, patients and their families.

In this remote mountain county, the incidence of diabetes is high, and so are its costs. About 470 of the county’s 9,000 adults have been diagnosed with diabetes, and an estimated 235 more people may have the condition. Annual hospitalization charges related to diabetes in the county top $3.7 million.

Leo Moore doesn’t intend for the disease to take a toll on her, and enrolling in Extension’s Out for Lunch program was among the first steps she took in making sure of that.

As a result, “I now have my diabetes under control, I lost 50 pounds, and I started exercising,” she says. “I was extremely impressed.”

She was so impressed that she became one of the program’s most valuable volunteers, helping prepare some meal ingredients before the class starts and sharing what’s she’s learned with fellow diabetes patients.

Breedlove says, “Leo is so enthusiastic. She has been a great help, especially in helping participants understand serving size and what they can and can’t eat.

“She says, ‘I’m going to die one of these days, but I’m not going to die of something that I can control!’”

And now that her diabetes is under control, Moore sees her volunteer work as “my payback — a way of trying to help someone else get what I received.

“If it helps just one person,” she says, “then I think the effort is worth it.”

—Dee Shore