The University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine is developing an $11 million research center focusing on diabetes, a growing disease that disproportionately affects Native Hawaiians, Asians and Pacific Islanders.

The National Institutes of Health awarded the school $11 million in grants over five years, which will go toward creating a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Diabetes to conduct research, including animal and human clinical studies specific to Hawaii’s high-risk population.

Roughly half of the state population has diabetes or prediabetes, said center Director Mariana Gerschenson, who won the federal grants, which are renewable up to 15 years.

Diabetes often leads to other chronic conditions like cancer, kidney and heart disease. Prediabetes is characterized by higher-than-normal blood sugar levels that increase the risk for the disease.

“The past two decades have seen staggering increases in prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. The disease is now growing at an epidemic rate and affects nearly 600,000 people, or 1 in 2 Hawaii residents,” said Lance Ching, state Health Department epidemiologist.

Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are two times more likely to have diabetes than other ethnic groups in the islands, according to statistics from the American Diabetes Association.

In addition to the physical toll diabetes takes, the disease costs patients, insurers and the government $1.5 billion a year in direct and indirect expenditures, according to the American Diabetes Association. Those costs include spending on drugs and lost productivity.

“There’s a genetic component to this, and we don’t know why that is,” Gerschenson said. “If you develop diabetes you’re at risk for all these other diseases, and you’re very likely to get them.”

Scientists also don’t understand why prediabetic patients become diabetic, she added.

Fifteen to 30 percent of the prediabetics will develop diabetes within five years, said the state Health Department.

“That’s the billion-dollar question. We have lots of people who are prediabetic and may never become diabetic,” she said. “If you’re prediabetic you do not want to become diabetic. You really do need to take measures to reduce the amount of sugar and carbohydrates you’re taking in. This is something you can treat and you can prevent from happening.”

LJ Duenas, Hawaii director of the American Diabetes Association, added that diabetes is the strongest contributing factor to heart disease, the No. 1 killer in Hawaii.

“When you look at it like that, if you can control the diabetes epidemic, you can control mortality rates … and the many deaths caused by heart disease,” Duenas said.

An estimated 155,000 adults and children, or 1 in 9 people, had diabetes in 2016, up from 83,700 in 2012. Another 460,000 have prediabetes.

Nationwide more than 100 million people — or 1 in 3 Americans — are living with diabetes or prediabetes, driving up medical costs by $245 billion, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rich Meiers, former president and CEO of the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, developed diabetes early in life, and that eventually lead to kidney disease. He has been on dialysis for four hours a day three times a week for the past few years.

“I lost part of my left leg as a result about two years ago. The number is so great here in Hawaii for people who have diabetes. All you’ve got to do is sit in dialysis one day and see all the people that come in there. It has an impact on everybody,” said Meiers, 78.

The former health care executive says people, particularly in their youth, should be mindful of their lifestyle choices before it’s too late.

“It was probably what I ate all my younger life: a lot of junk food, fast foods and things like that. Everybody should look at what they’re doing when you’re 30 years old, or 40 or even 50,” he said. “Usually when you’re that young you think, ‘I’ll stay in great health all my life.’ If (you get diabetes) at a younger age, you could have a long time looking forward to dialysis. It catches up to you.”