Hoag grant assists CHOC

Elia Powers

A grant from Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian is enabling

Children’s Hospital of Orange County to provide expanded diabetes

services to Newport-Mesa residents.

In late February, Hoag Hospital officials earmarked funds for

diabetes education, community outreach, screenings and a minimum of

two half-day clinics per month for local families, said Dr. Gwyn

Parry, director of community medicine at Hoag Hospital.

Less than three months into the partnership, CHOC’s staff of

diabetes specialists are spending much of their time researching how

to best use their new resources.

“We don’t want to go into the community and replicate what’s

there,” said Dr. Jody Krantz, medical director of the diabetes

program at CHOC. “We want to fill in the holes.”

The grant is part of Hoag Hospital’s community benefit program,

which provides health resources to local institutions.

Parry said he couldn’t disclose the amount of the grant but said

it is “significant” and “had been in the works for a while.”

“We’re trying to create a healthy community,” Parry said. “It’s

more than just access to healthcare. We recognize that kids who are

overweight have a tendency to develop diabetes.”

With the money given from Hoag, CHOC has opened a diabetes clinic

in Costa Mesa, which operates on the first Monday of each month.

Community members have access to endocrinologists and diabetes

educators at the center. CHOC has hired a bilingual employee to

develop outreach programs in the Latino community, Krantz said.

She said the funds will allow CHOC to focus more resources on

children’s diabetes, an issue of rising concern.

“We are seeing children with problems we’d only used to see in

adults due to obesity and type 2 diabetes,” said Krantz, whose

diabetes program at CHOC helps about 1,500 patients. “This is a huge

problem.”

The one-day-a-month clinic run by CHOC will augment a Hoag-run

diabetes clinic in Costa Mesa that runs on weekdays. That facility

focuses primarily on education for adults who suffer from diabetes.

The new program will be promoted in the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District over the next two months, Parry said, adding that

Newport-Mesa school district nurses have already been notified of the

new resources.

Krantz said the Newport-Mesa school district is progressive when

it comes to testing their students for early-onset diabetes and

educating families about the dangers of the condition.

Still, she said there is more work to do. That includes expanded

screenings at schools and programs for uninsured residents.

The educational component of the new programming is being provided

by the Pediatric Adolescent Diabetes Research and Education

foundation, an organization which is headquartered at CHOC.

The foundation’s executive director, Elizabeth Toumajian, said the

grant will allow educational programming to reach families,

regardless of their medical provider or location.

“It’s a dream,” Toumajian said. “Now we can attack a huge problem

at a larger scale rather than start at only one school.”