In July 2020, members of the DPAC Team, alongside DPAC Champion Paul Madden, visited the White House and were able to relay to then-President Trump and other top officials the importance of affordable insulin access. The speech’s international exposure correctly focused on the prohibitive, high price of insulin and prescription drugs and the importance of affordability and access for people with diabetes to increase productivity benefitting theirs and their families’ lives.
In January 2021, as COVID-19 vaccinations began to rollout, the diabetes advocate community was surprised to find that the CDC had not categorized people with T1D as being at an increased risk for complications, potentially resulting in the approximately 1.6 million Americans with T1D receiving the vaccine later than others with similarly research-proven risk levels. In response, DPAC developed a letter-writing campaign which resulted in over 2000 letters being sent to every eligible governor in the US. Come April 2021, the CDC officially included T1D on its list of medical conditions. Together we moved the needle.
