It’s Diabetes Awareness Month! Saturday marks another World Diabetes Day.
Guess what? There are still very easy ways to advocate and show your solidarity with your friends who are also living with or affected by this disease. Here are just a few:
Big Blue Test: In case you didn’t know, Big Blue Test is the yearly effort from Diabetes Hands Foundation that encourages us to check our BGs, get up and get moving, then check again and log the results at BigBlueTest.org. Don’t have diabetes? No problem! Just leave out the BG test results. Or, if you really want to, go ahead and prick your finger before and after your exercise anyway. Whatever makes you happy.
The best part is that each test logged helps to raise much needed cash for worthy diabetes organizations like SucreBlue and CarbDM. They’re about 6500 tests short of their goal of 110,000 entries by Saturday night. So do not forget to log those Big Blue Tests, either at the website or via the handy-dandy app.
CGM coverage for Medicare patients: If you live in the USA, Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition makes it super easy to e-mail your congressperson and senators. In fact, I’ll bet you can do it in under one minute. Start the clock! CLICK HERE and get the necessary text, including references to the existing bills before the House and Senate. Enter your information, click submit, and your piece of advocacy is on its way. Really, it doesn’t get any easier than that.
World Diabetes Day Twitter Chat! Diabetes Community Advocacy Foundation is once again sponsoring hour upon hour of Twitter chats on World Diabetes Day, hosted each hour by a different person, all designed to raise awareness, support one another, and have a few laughs. Check in throughout the day and meet new people from around the world, engage in the conversation, and tell us how your day is going.
This year we’re doing 14 hours of continuous Twitter chat using the hashtag #WDDChat15. Each hour will have a different theme. I’ll be leading off beginning at 7:00 a.m. Eastern time here in the USA, followed at 8:00 by Kelly Kunik. Remember… follow the #WDDChat15 hashtag to join the conversation.
However your week shapes up, I hope it’s filled with raising awareness and celebrating our fellow friends living with and affected by diabetes. So get going, write those letters, and I’ll talk to you on Saturday morning!