Tag Archives: Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition

Like these Diabetes Awareness Month links.

November 10, 2015 – 11:00 am

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!
 

By StephenS | Posted in Like these links | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Be a joiner.

July 20, 2015 – 11:00 am

If you know me, you know I can be skeptical of new things.

But today, I am, in fact, a joiner. The truth is, I want to join good causes, with good ideas. That’s why I’m a joiner today. Today, I’m joining forces in a big way with the Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition. And I’m inviting you to become part of the coalition too.

DPAC is a non-profit, non-partisan group designed to bring a united, patient-centered voice to issues affecting all People With Diabetes. It’s right on their website:

”We envision a strong patient voice in diabetes policy. A voice that unifies advocacy to the shared challenges of physical and emotional care needed to live well with any type of diabetes.”

Sort of an e pluribus unum (out of many, one) approach to diabetes advocacy. And DPAC makes it easy… click here, do this, send it there kinds of steps that allow you and I to take part in advocacy efforts without giving up an entire weekend or even an entire weeknight. In fact, I was able to e-mail my congressman and U.S. senators in probably less than two minutes.

Let me ask you: What is most important to you?

– Is it getting Medicare to cover continuous glucose monitors for seniors living with diabetes?

– Is it ensuring safety and quality in all of the devices we depend on to keep ourselves alive each day?

– Do you want to make sure that glucose testing in a multi-patient environment (like hospitals, for example) is done in a safe and consistent manner?

These are just a few of the many issues that Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition is helping us bring to the attention of lawmakers. They make it easy to e-mail elected officials with unified language we can use (or update with our own story, if we choose to do so).

Getting the issues in front of us to see… helping us say, in one voice, multiple times over, that better care, better drugs, better devices, and better coverage for all of those things are important to everyone living with diabetes. That’s what Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition is all about.

So I urge you… become part of the coalition. Be a joiner like me.

Go to diabetespac.org, sign up, and add your voice to the chorus. Because we need you. Because I need you.

This is probably the one and only PAC I will ever be a part of. Why? Because your life, and my life, are too important not to take advantage of the opportunity to make our voices heard. Let’s not stop until our voices are heard. With you as one of the many voices.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Advocacy | Also tagged , | Comments (0)