[gtranslate]
Founded in 2015, the Sky Lakes Wellness Center is a lifestyle medicine clinic that helps people prevent and manage chronic disease through nutrition, stress management, sleep, fitness, and social connection. In 2024, the center served 1,450 patients through provider visits and reached 1,200 more community members through classes. Participants in the four-month Lifestyle Change Program lose an average of 4% of their starting weight and see meaningful drops in depression and anxiety scores.
Danny Hawkes can tell you what that looks like in real life. In 2016, he weighed between 318 and 330 pounds, was on two blood pressure medications and a cholesterol drug, and was pre-diabetic. A short hike with his family left him winded and discouraged.
“I either need to change my life or change my expectations,” he told his wife that day.
His doctor suggested the Wellness Center’s weight management program. Within two and a half months, Hawkes had already hit the program’s 10% weight-loss goal. By year’s end, he was off both blood pressure medications and his cholesterol drug. His A1C dropped from 5.9 to 4.7, well into the healthy range. As of today, he is down 77 pounds and has tracked more than 17,000 miles on foot since he started.
He has also taken up backpacking again, reached nearly every high peak in the Sky Lakes and Crater Lake wilderness areas, and gotten his wife into the backcountry alongside him. “I just can’t extol the virtues of [the Wellness Center] enough,” Hawkes says. “I told them I’d crawl through a hot desert of broken glass to be supportive of the things they do to change lives.”
How Can You Get Involved?
Help the Klamath Basin continue to rise by getting involved in community programs. Whether your passions lie in food, play, art, wellness, careers for the future, or lifelong health, you can help.
