Local Impact - Washington

Buddy and Les Hoptowit (Brothers), Yakama

Yakama Indian Health Center Healthy Heart Project

"The Healthy Heart Program has given us a new confidence in our overall health."
- Buddy and Les Hoptowit (Brothers)

I signed up for the Healthy Heart Program first and got my brother Les to join a month later. We both live with type 2 diabetes and being involved in the program is important to us because we have seen the devastation of diabetes in our community and have lost family members to diabetes complications-especially heart disease.

Before the Healthy Heart Program became available to us we had to have separate medical appointments for everything we needed to take care of our diabetes and then we would have to go back to have our prescriptions filled.

Now, we have direct access to our own pharmacist-case manager and we get excellent, personalized care. It is so much better because we get diabetes education, foot checks, and our medications refilled and adjusted, all in one visit.

Although it hasn’t always been easy, we are more physically active, and eat healthier. We have managed to make healthy changes and get better control of our diabetes and reduce our risk for heart disease.

Diabetes in Washington

According to 2008 CDC data, approximately 345,000 people in Washington – 6.9% of the state’s population – had diagnosed diabetes, and many of them suffer from diabetes related complications or conditions. In addition to the human toll diabetes places on people in Washington, the financial burden diabetes places on the state’s health system is staggering – in 2007, the direct and indirect cost of diabetes in Washington was approximately $3.97 billion.

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