Diabetes Awareness March...Are You In?

By Tom Karlya in Blog: The Diabetes Advocate On January 27, 2017

Would you march to raise awareness about diabetes on World Diabetes Day, November 14th? Save the date!

It was hard not to miss all of the news coverage surrounding the Women’s March on Washington which took place on January 21^st.  Hundreds of thousands attended in the gathering in DC and hundreds of thousands more marched across the globe. For not having an ‘official’ organizer, as it were; it surely had a huge turnout of an estimated 3 million people around the planet, according to some sources.

It caught the attention of the world. People who had something to say. People who passionately believed marching was the thing to do to garner the most attention. Marching so people would take notice.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm…???

Was I the only one who witnessed this act of history and thought, “What would it take for diabetes to have a movement like that?” A march to bring to light the numerous what I call ‘diabetes’ injustices’. How does this call to action sound? Diabetes Awareness March November...because:  D.A.M.N.—something needs to be done.

Among the tasks on that agenda:

• The battle to obtain life-saving diabetes supplies; 
• The battle to gain/keep medical coverage from 64 years 364 days and 23 hours to 65 years and I minute. 
• The battle so the missed diagnosis of type 1 diabetes is resolved and no one else dies or becomes seriously ill with DKA.
• The battle that diabetes is not a joke about eating. 
• The battle to keep funding for diabetes research that seem to always be on the ’chopping’ block in Washington.
• The battle against the steady rising cost of diabetes supplies like insulin.

If There's Power in Numbers, We Got That Covered 

Yes, the diabetes community has a few issues worth marching for if you ask me. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says over 29 million people have diabetes, most of them type twos. Multiply that number by a two-loved-one exponent per person, and you would have 87 million people THAT SHOULD HAVE SOMETHING to say, some voice to be heard; something to march about.

I’m not too picky, I’ll accept if only 1% shows up—that would still be approximately 890,000 people in Washington.