Diabetes Education and Support: Everyone Has a Role. What’s Yours?

If you have diabetes—or care for someone living with this disease—you know that diabetes education and support are important to help with people diabetes stay healthy.

More than 29 million Americans have diabetes, and it is estimated that one in every four people with diabetes does not even know they have the disease. If left undiagnosed or untreated, diabetes can lead to serious health problems, including heart attack and stroke.

The National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) and Rosemarie Caillier, DPM, PC want you to know that diabetes education is needed throughout a person’s lifetime, not just at diagnosis. Having a network of support can also help a person with diabetes better cope with the day-to-day demands of living with diabetes.

Whether you are a person living with diabetes, a family member, caregiver, health care professional, or a part of the community—such as an employer, member of the school staff, or clergy—you have an important role to play when it comes to diabetes education and support.

The NDEP offers many resources that you can use to support people with diabetes in your community. Here are some of them:

• 4 Steps to Manage Your Diabetes for Life (available in English/Spanish): This booklet provides four steps to help people with diabetes understand, monitor, and manage their diabetes to help them stay healthy.
• How to Help a Loved One Cope with Diabetes (available in English/Spanish): This tip sheet provides practical suggestions for helping loved ones cope with diabetes. It also lists organizations that can help.
• Helping the Student with Diabetes Succeed: A Guide for School Personnel: This comprehensive resource helps students with diabetes, their health care team, school staff, and parents work together to provide optimal diabetes management in the school setting.
• Diabetes HealthSense: Diabetes HealthSense is an online library that provides easy access to more than 160 resources from more than 80 organizations that support people with diabetes, people at risk for the disease, and those who care for them in making changes to live well or facilitating behavior change in others.

For more information, please visit www.YourDiabetesInfo.org/DiabetesMonth2015.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Diabetes Education Program is jointly sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the support of more than 200 partner organizations.