This Valentine’s day, I would like to celebrate our corporate sponsors. The pharmaceutical industry who is Healthy Interactions partner in delivering education programs for healthcare providers (HCPs) and people with diabetes (PWD).

For me personally, it all started 13 years ago, when I was part of the pharma sponsored diabetes education team in Chicago. I was educating physicians and their patients on starting insulin. As a diabetes educator, I had access to several hundred primary care doctors and their patients who embraced this complementary service. This would not be possible without a generous sponsorship from the pharmaceutical company, which believes in the power of education. The more informed and empowered the doctors and PWD are, the better insulin initiation and usage experience for all. As a diabetes educator, I have been able to gain skills not only about insulin initiation and titration but how to work with PWD and collaborate with the doctors to achieve desirable outcomes.

It seems inconceivable when I start a sentence with “most recently” as it has been 10 years now since it all started with our Journey For Control program that now includes over 30,000 diabetes educators. I personally do not know a larger scale diabetes education program in US. With the collaboration with American Diabetes Association and sponsorship from Merck, we have provided diabetes self-management education and support to millions of PWD. Whenever I am delivering training on the Conversation Map tools, a local pharmaceutical representative has invited the diabetes educators in attendance.  I know that each of those local representatives believes in the power of educating PWD and supporting local healthcare providers. Without the support of the local representatives in letting all know about the program, the mega scale of this 30,000 HCPs trained would not be a possibility!

So this Valentine’s day, I would like to send love and appreciation to all of the pharmaceutical representatives and the industry that have been so much more than sponsors to our programs. They have been our partners in supporting diabetes educators on a mission to empower and educate PWD. Consequently, improving outcomes and experience for all involved in diabetes care.