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April 04, 2006 —Health officials estimate that about one in eight adults in New York City has diabetes. The increasingly widespread disease is becoming more and more common among children, too. Doctors believe poor nutrition and exercise habits play a role in the epidemic. WNYC’s Beth Fertig reports on a new program that’s aiming to change the habits of middle school students.

REPORTER: Twelve-year-old Destiny Spencer is a pretty typical seventh-grader. She says she used to eat a lot of fast food.

SPENCER: I used to go to McDonalds. McDonalds is like on every corner that you see, you turn around and it’s there. And when you’re hungry you just say "oh, it’s cheap. It’s cheap and I’m hungry."

REPORTER: Destiny goes to Middle School 88 in Brooklyn, which just completed a four-month long program designed to change how students eat in the hopes of reducing the risk of diabetes. It was coordinated with Maimonides Children and Infants Hospital. Pediatrics chairman Steven Shelov says teenagers are the perfect target population. And not only because they tend to eat a lot of junk food.

SHELOV: That’s when type 2 diabetes starts to take hold. If we can identify early precursors of it and stop it then we can really prevent it in most children.

REPORTER: Type 2 is the most common form of diabetes and it’s linked to obesity as well as heredity. Excess sugar builds up in the blood when the body can’t use the hormone insulin properly. The disease can lead to blindness, kidney failure and amputations.

At Middle School 88, students took a special health class that encouraged them to eat less fat and more vegetables. Shelov says the school cooperated.

SHELOV: They saw that there were some problems with their own cafeteria menu and they allowed us to work with them to alter some of that cafeteria menu. And therefore offer more healthy food and decrease the offering of some not so healthy foods.

REPORTER: Students in the program also took an alternate gym class with hip hop dancing. And blood samples were taken throughout the study to measure any changes in the risk factors for diabetes – such as glucose levels and resistance to insulin.

The results aren’t in yet. But the program has already been expanded to include five more middle schools in New York City and Nassau County. Funded by the Starr Foundation, the $5 million study is being led by a consortium of 33 medical schools and research centers in New York State called the Academic Medicine Development Company. The new study was announced today in Harlem. One participant is Dr. Michael Rosenbaum, a pediatrician who teaches at Columbia University’s medical school.

ROSENBAUM: Most of us know how hard it is to alter our diet or exercise patterns and sustain it. But there are a lot of studies that show if you institute those kinds of changes early, emphasize to children at a young age that a healthy diet and exercise regularly is important, then those changes are likely to last a lifetime.

REPORTER: Rosenbaum led a pilot study of 75 students in another New York City middle school that found changes in nutrition and exercise could reduce multiple risk factors for diabetes.

The new study of five schools will target 1000 students. It will also look at differences in ethnic populations. Latinos and blacks are considered at a higher risk for diabetes. Destiny Spencer says her classes at MS 88 encouraged her to change her diet even though she was never overweight. Now, she doesn’t mind eating her vegetables.

SPENCER: Actually it’s very surprising but I like beets. I love beets. And I like broccoli. So I try, every day I try to get a mixture – I ask my mother if she could mix like foods, if she make baked chicken I ask her to put a little vegetables in it, everything I ask so it can help my family to be safe.

REPORTER: If the risk of diabetes does go down for kids like Destiny who participate in school-based programs, researchers say the results could lead to big changes. Armed with data, they could pressure schools to change their meals, their gym classes, and their vending contracts. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.