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• She said a lack of funding, space and staff has limited what she can do, and tribal members have asked for help.
• The new wellness center, which is still under construction, will offer the types of fitness classes and education that are accessible in much of the rest of the country. The building now used for classes is too small, Brushbreaker said. The biggest room is 8 by 10 feet, which makes yoga or Zumba difficult.
• Because many of the more than 21,000 tribal members on Rosebud don't have transportation, the mobile unit will travel throughout the reservation -- which is larger than the state of Rhode Island -- and screen people, Brushbreaker said.
• The certified native educators are needed because IHS, which provides health care to Indians, no longer has any educators on the reservation, she said.
• "People come into my office because they've not been given any information on what's going on with their body," Brushbreaker said. "They'll go in to see the doctor and they'll say, 'here's medication for your diabetes' and the patient has never been told they have diabetes."
• The American Diabetes Association, in an email to The Associated Press, said the effort should help: "Reservations may be located in remote areas with limited access to health care and exercise facilities with proper exercise equipment, so this innovative program has potential to have high impact, especially since many reservations have limited resources (financial, land, etc.). Additionally, a wellness center that emphasizes proper nutrition and provided education would be extremely beneficial to those on reservations."
• Novo Nordisk founded the World Diabetes Foundation to diagnose and help people with diabetes in developing countries. Rosebud is the first such project in North America, said the pharmaceutical company's general counsel, Curt Oltmans, who grew up nearby in Nebraska and made meat deliveries to Rosebud while in college.
• "I said if I'm ever in a position to help the people, I'd like to do that," Oltmans said by phone from Princeton, N.J. "Almost 30 years later, I had this opportunity to get involved."
• Details of the program will be presented in December at a conference in Melbourne, Australia, at the World Diabetes Congress, he said.
• "My personal hope is that this is going to lead better awareness and education and screening on the reservation. We have a fear that there's a lot of undiagnosed diabetes," Oltmans said. "Their views are very Third World, unfortunately, uninformed views of diabetes."
• The Rosebud program is drawing attention from other groups that work with Native Americans, and the company views it as a long-term commitment, Oltmans

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