Communities to recognize National Diabetes Month

Maryland — When the calendar flips to November – communities across the country will be recognizing National Diabetes Month to raise awareness about the disease impacting millions of Americans each year.

Over 40 million Americans live with diabetes, according to the most recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control, while another 115 million are estimated to be pre-diabetic. Officials say those numbers make raising awareness about the widespread disease a priority.

“So many of our population, they may not necessarily be in the hospital with diabetes, but that is a factor in their life,” said Lori Lee, a diabetes educator with TidalHealth.

World Diabetes Day falls on November 14th. With this year’s theme being “Early Action on Diabetes,” experts can’t help but emphasize the importance of directing people to factual and helpful information about the disease.

“Getting that information out there is so important to correcting misinformation, to providing resources for those that are perhaps recently diagnosed,” said Dr. Joshua Vieth, the senior director of research at BreakthroughT1D, a national nonprofit focused on Type 1 Diabetes.

Type 1 is an autoimmune condition impacting 1.5 million Americans, and is a condition Vieth said is often misunderstood. Type 1 only accounts for around 5% of diabetes cases in the U.S. and isn’t tied to lifestyle.

Vieth told WMDT that November is a time to share the reality of people’s experiences with the condition — which is why T1D is running a visual ad campaign this month.

“Our goal is to show that living with type one diabetes is actually, like a lot of the burden of living with T1D is invisible. And we want people to actually see it,” Vieth said.