While we were experiencing a much ado about nothing “snow storm” in Washington, DC on March 6, 2013, hundreds of diabetes advocates were storming Capitol Hill for a cause we should be doing much about.

To kick off their advocacy day the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) released findings from a report they commissioned, Economic Costs of Diabetes in the U.S. in 2012, at a press conference. Joining ADA leaders at the press event were Ann Albright, PhD, RD, director of CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation, Judith Fradkin, MD, director of the National Institutes of Health’s division which encompasses diabetes (NIDDK) and several key members of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Senator Jean Shaheen (D-NH) (who has a granddaughter with type 1 diabetes I learned at AADE's advocacy day in 2012).

The stats presented by ADA are downright scary! It is, without a doubt, time to sound the alert about our prediabetes and type 2 diabetes epidemics louder and louder.

Check out a few key stats.* Read through these slowly and repeatedly, it takes a few readings to absorb their impact!

Revised numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were just published in the National Diabetes Fact Sheet and they are, once again, disheartening and staggering but not surprising:

The facts and figures about the financial costs of diabetes as well as the numbers of children and adults at risk of developing type 2 diabetes due to genetics, but more so being overweight, are staggering…and “sobering” as noted by Drs Judith Fradkin and Griffin Rodgers, from the diabetes division of the National Institutes of Health, in their Diabetes Care editorial The Economic Imperative to Conquer Diabetes (extract).