Diabetes Advocates Join Educators Asking For Diabetes Education for All
Manny Hernandez and Bennet Dunlap, members of the Diabetes Advocates joined with AADE diabetes educators spreading out across Capitol Hill asking Congress to make quality diabetes education available to all. Diabetes education is the cornerstone of living successfully with diabetes, said Manny, Congress recognized the importance of education by creating a Medicare benefit of education in 1997. Unfortunately they failed to list diabetes educators as professionals who can deliver the training.
I was honored to join with the educators that have done so much in helping my family learn how to live support our tow kids with type 1 diabetes, Bennet added. Diabetes educators helped us all, the kids with diabetes, their siblings and mom and dad learn how to live with insulin, diabetes and how to have a new but normal life after diagnosis.
By working with the educators community the Diabetes Advocates share the importance of helping policy serve people with diabetes. Diabetes is big, Bennet said, The Government is big. Sometimes the moving parts of those big things come together with unintended consequences. This is one of those cases. The goal is higher quality lives, with lower rates of complications and their associated costs. That is something we all want. Unfortunately, in the details certified diabetes educators were left out of the mix.
Before visiting Members of Congress, Manny and Bennet shared some social media tips with educators. Their goal was to help take the Hill Visits into the virtual online world. Their session ended with the introduction of a custom web page to make it easy of anyone interested in assuring that diabetes education is available to all to send a Twitter message to their elected officials.
Please join the call for #DiabetesEd4All at http://www.stripsafely.com/social/aade-tweet/
The AADE member gave the DA a standing ovation, naturally we tweeted a selfie.
