It's quite simple, actually. If you're not healthy, you can't help people. You have to have a great deal of the mental capacity to provide direction and knowledge, and to transfer that knowledge on how to live healthy and to participate in activities in the community that are healthy. Those are all important in enabling people as individuals to help and mentor their families. The families that are very healthy in the community can support and are usually the foundation. The person or people provide a great deal of that secondary support outside of primary families to aunts and uncles who are suffering from health issues. We see it a lot with diabetes. The cancer rate is very high. It's a loss for us.
For example, my mother is in the hospital right now. She's in and out because she has liver disease. It really weighs not only on me, but on my brothers and my family. We're always thinking of her. She's still very young. She's not even 60 yet.
The livelihood and the inability for the health system to provide alternatives or that extra support for her to deal with the health issues...those are transferred as well. Diabetes is very much preventable in our communities, but we continue to see skyrocketing rates that lead to amputations and kidney failure. There's maybe not enough education around that. For her and others who are going through this, if they're able to overcome and manage, that's important for us, the younger population, to understand.
I think it's not something that should be isolated to the health system. It's something that needs to be part of the education system overall.