Health officials concerned about the rate of childhood diabetes in U.S. children

• FAIRFIELD - Pride and love fill Debra Minnema-Dingman when she looks at her son, Devon, but sometimes tremors of terror do, too.
• The Dixon mom fears her son will develop diabetes because she knows being overweight is a leading risk factor and the chronic condition runs in her family.
• Many children in Devon's school and community look like him, and that worries doctors and economists, who say the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States threatens to shorten the life span of today's youth and bankrupt the nation's health care system.
• "For the first time ever, children are coming down with type 2 diabetes directly as a result of the growing obesity epidemic," said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.
• "The costs of diabetes and the long-term health effects are tremendous," he said.
• Nearly one out of three local children and teenagers is overweight and unfit, according to the Children and Weight Coalition of Solano County.
• According to the American Diabetes Association, one out of three American children born in 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime.
• Fairfield pediatrician Anita Jain sees an increasing number of children with type 2 diabetes, which used to be called adult-onset diabetes, because just 15 years ago it was virtually unheard of in children, she said.
• About 90 percent of the 18 million diabetes cases in the United States are type 2 diabetes, a largely preventable condition that occurs when the body fails to properly use insulin, the hormone that helps the body change food into energy.
• Jain works with families to change their eating and exercise habits.
• Many families, however, are swimming upstream against a river of unhealthy food, unsafe neighborhoods and lack of time, she said.