http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/diabetes-blog-week-2016-key-advocacy-messages/
Welcome to another round of Diabetes Blog Week!
This is the 7th year in a row that our very vocal D-community is coming together to rally around the same topic each day for a full week.
If you remember, this effort was spearheaded by fellow type 1 Karen Graffeo in Connecticut who blogs at Bitter-Sweet Diabetes. Karen created this annual week-long blog carnival as a way for dozens of D-bloggers (more than 100 participating each year!) to create an unprecedented sharing of perspectives on issues relating to our illness. You can learn more about this effort, and sign up yourself if interested, here.
For Opening Day 2016, the topic is Messages:
Let"s kick off the week by talking about why we are here, in the diabetes blog space. What is the most important diabetes awareness message to you? Why do you find it important, and what are you trying to accomplish by sharing it on your blog? Diabetes Blog Week 2016, Day OneOK, honestly... where do we start?! We could probably write a 9,000-word post about diabetes awareness messages from, "Yes, we CAN eat that," to "There"s no such things as "the bad kind" of diabetes," to "Hey Hollywood, here are the FACTS about diabetes," to "Listen up, CMS and insurers, people with diabetes need real support for their quality of life!"
I started DiabetesMine 11 years ago out of a deep desire to connect with other PWDs, to get a "reality check" of sorts and discover ways that we can help inform and support each other. And man, has the community come a long way!
Today, our collective voices are making waves on some of the most important messages in our D-World:
- Access to necessary supplies and the most impactful treatments
- Informing the public at large about the challenges of diabetes
- Fostering peer support and recognition of the psychological challenges of this illness
- Overall motivation and the message that "You Can Do This!"
Our belief is that everyone in the community brings their own unique voice, talents, and yes... even messages to the community via their writing and offline efforts. It"s an expanding universe of connection, information and story-sharing, and advocacy.
Watching this develop has been quite the ride over the past decade, Mike and I agree!
We view our role here at the "Mine in part as one of amplifying all those voices -- helping to get the word out about what"s happening, and oftentimes how you can get involved in the hottest advocacy message of the day. Yes of course, they rotate, depending on current events in the healthcare and D-world.
If there"s one message I"d like to emphasize today, it"s that these advocacy pushes (on CGM and competitive bidding, etc.) need to be elevated above and beyond our own DOC bubble. For example, I"ve been working to get the attention of major business publications (think WSJ, NYT, etc.) on the latest UnitedHealthcare / Medtronic move to restrict insulin pump access. I don"t know if I"ll be successful, but I guarantee you nothing will change if we"re only talking amongst ourselves within the tight-knit T1D community.
That"s part of the reason we were happy to join San Francisco-based Healthline Media last year, as a way to help bring information and advocacy on the realities of diabetes to even more people.
Last time we wrote about the most important Diabetes Messages, we focused on unity among the community. We still stand behind that -- not in the sense that everyone will agree on everything of course, but that we should avoid sniping at each other (T1 vs. T2, etc.) and rather focus on representing all of our best interests to the world outside the DOC.
That"s our message, I suppose.
More on why words matter is coming later this week with Wednesday"s D-Blog Week focus on Language.
Stay tuned.
You can take part in D-Blog Week yourself, or read other posts and share your POV. Also be sure to follow hashtag #DBlogWeek, or on the Facebook page.
Happy D-Blog Week sharing, All!
Disclaimer
This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn"t adhere to Healthline"s editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline"s partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.
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