The Monday after National Diabetes Week is a chance to take stock, take a deep breath and take a moment to look back over the busy days.

This year’s campaign was terrific in that the messaging was strong and it got a lot of attention. It was great to see the same information being rolled out across the country, and shared internationally, too. I certainly believe the campaign’s main theme of needing to detect and treat all types of diabetes sooner resonated with people across the globe.

So, there are some of my highlights from last week:

Frank Sita can certainly claim best on ground for his relentless support of the campaign. He blogged, vlogged and SoMe’d the hell out of the campaign and was also interviewed in a great piece for The West Australian newspaper. (Plus, he nailed the #LanguageMatters talk with the journalist.) Nice work, Frank!

Diabetes NSW & ACT held their Diabetes Australia Research Program Awards on Thursday night, using NDW as an opportunity to underline the importance of research, and recognise just some of the wonderful researchers working to unwrap the secrets of diabetes.

There are far too many stories of missed type 1 diabetes diagnosis, and many were featured last week. You can see these stories on the Diabetes Australia Facebook page. It’s simply not good enough that people have to become really, really sick before they are correctly diagnosed. Everyone must know the 4Ts.

 

There was a most welcome announcement with Health Minister Greg Hunt launching Australia’s first national diabetes eye screening program to reduce vision loss and blindness in people with diabetes. this is a great example of Government, and industry (Specsavers will also be contributing to the program) working together and with health groups to support people with diabetes.

Bill Shorten’s Friday evening call to the Government to broaden CGM funding was beautifully timed and was a great way to end the week, providing an awesome bookmark to the previous week’s piece on The Project.

 

Theresa May would have no idea that she provided an outstanding opportunity for us to get in a little #NDW2018 last-minute advocacy and awareness across the national press, just by wearing her Libre sensor.

And so, it’s a wrap. Except, of course it isn’t. We still need to remind people of the signs and symptoms of diabetes. We need better detection programs. We need more awareness. This campaign doesn’t get boxed up and archived, never to be thought of again. We must keep talking about it.

Of course, National Diabetes Week may be over, but for those of us living with it, every week is diabetes week. And so on we go: ‘doing’, ‘living’ and ‘being’ diabetes.