DIANE MAKAR MURPHY STARS program gives stellar care to diabetics

It's eerie walking down the long, empty hallways of the former Southside hospital. Where you once saw doctors, nurses and staff rushing about, you will, in one far corner, see child care, in another, a meeting, and many vacant rooms in between.
You will also find Forum Health's STARS Diabetes Outreach Project and Patricia Greene.
Funded by a $440,000 federal grant, STARS is headed by Greene, a determined and enthusiastic woman who believes in her job. Greene and her staff work to get uninsured diabetics into proper care, so that, hopefully, the only hospital they'll be visiting is the defunct Southside one.
"We have a problem with people [without insurance] using emergency rooms instead of a physician," Greene said. "The STARS Project has enough grant money to serve more people than we are serving. If the government pays for it with a grant, they won't pay for it later in emergency room visits." And diabetics will get better care.
Education
Greene will have been an RN for seven years in July. Before that, she worked 24 years with Ohio Bell and AT & amp;T. There she began organizing health fairs and "taking a class here and there" in community health. Walking to classes one day at YSU, she heard a voice whisper in her left ear, "Nursing."
Whether it was the echo of another student's voice, or the voice of God, Greene doesn't know, but she believed it to be the latter.
With one child in college and one in high school, and growing tuition payments in the future, she enrolled in St. Elizabeth's nursing program nonetheless. With her husband's support, Greene became an RN.
But she didn't stop there. This academic year, Greene returned to school, completing a daunting 43 semester hours and a degree in community health at YSU, while serving as STARS' full-time coordinator, helping people live with diabetes.
Diabetes is a condition in which a lack of insulin or improper use of insulin results in blood sugar problems. A person with diabetes doesn't efficiently convert sugar to the body's use. Over time, high blood sugar levels can hurt the kidneys, eyes, nerves and heart.
Some people enter the STARS program after testing with a blood sugar level of 600 to 800, Greene said. "Normal is 110."
Program
To those accepted into the program, STARS has provided free doctor visits, diabetic teaching one-on-one, nutritional counseling, free blood testing supplies, and monthly lunches and lectures. Some enroll in a free exercise program from the Jewish Community Center through STARS as well.
"The people who need our services are homeless, transient, ones without health care as a priority," Greene said. STARS tries to reach them by distributing "little purple fliers just about everywhere." WRTA buses also feature signs for the program.
"Some people don't have symptoms and some adapt to them and accept them as normal," Greene said. She strives to get participants to follow through on their treatments even as their symptoms diminish. Sometimes she is successful; sometimes not.
Explained Greene, "With diabetes, you can feel good to your grave. What can you say to them? You give them the facts. We give them solid, good proven information. ... I love people. I love nursing. I love education. But I can't make anyone do it. But STARS says, there is help for you, if you want to help yourself."
Greene was hired in October and is closing in on the end of the initial grant. She is hopeful the program will be funded again. "We thought we'd have 500 people by now," she said. Instead, 225 diabetics have entered STARS. Even if the program is not funded beyond July, those signing up will be linked with physician care that will continue.
Greene thinks STARS can help a lot more people if it continues, but if it doesn't, she's waiting for another whisper in her ear.
murphy@vindy.com