November 1, 2008

Diabetes Hits South the Hardest

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According to a CDC study released yesterday, new cases of Type 2 diabetes have nearly doubled in the last decade, from about 5 per 1,000 people in the mid-1990’s, to 9 per 1,000 in 2007. Type 2 diabetes accounts for nearly 95 percent of all diabetes cases in the US, and is often linked to America’s obesity epidemic.

The report was the first to analyze data by state, and found that the highest number of new diabetes patients are in the South. And it’s no wonder. The South has the highest rates of poverty and physical inactivity, two major risk factors for obesity.

—Nikki Gloudeman

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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