Advocate

Advocate

Deciding to take action to improve your diabetes self care is a step to becoming an advocate for women with diabetes. You can begin advocating for yourself and all women today by educating yourself and others about the challenges and issues faced by women with diabetes.

Together, we can ensure that the public is informed about diabetes and that women with a diabetes diagnosis have the support and education necessary to live a happy, healthy life. Your enthusiasm and diabetes knowledge will inspire and motivate others--it may even save someone's life.

DiabetesSisters provides a monthly e-newsletter and occasional email alerts about opportunities to get involved at the local, state, and national levels, as well as resources to help you tell your story and help other women. Who better to tell your story than YOU? However you choose to get involved, whether through community education, advocacy, speaking engagements or media outreach, you can make a difference in the lives of women living with diabetes as well as those at risk of developing diabetes.

orange:will

Orange:will was a national campaign initiated by DiabetesSisters that ran from Fall 2010 - Fall 2014. The campaign's main components included orange:will Awareness Walks at DiabetesSisters conferences, orange:will shirts and car magnets, and a specific DiabetesSisters donation designation. The campaign had two purposes:

  1. to establish orange as the official color of women's diabetes
  2. to raise awareness of the unique issues faced by women with diabetes

The average person is unaware of the unique challenges faced by women with diabetes during puberty, menstruation, pregnancy and menopause. There is very little research and few resources available to help women navigate these challenges. There is also little attention given to the increased risks of depression, cardiovascular disease, eating disorders, body image issues, osteoporosis, or ketoacidosis faced by women with diabetes. As a result, the general public and women with diabetes are uninformed about these risks. Without research, resources, or information, women with diabetes are at a severe disadvantage. By supporting the efforts of the orange:will campaign, you can do your part to ensure that women with diabetes are given a fair chance at living happy, healthy lives with the disease.

Why orange was chosen as the color for this campaign

After considerable research, orange was chosen to represent women with diabetes for a number of reasons. First and foremost, orange is considered a power color and a healing color.

Orange is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. It represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. In addition, orange is known to stimulate creativity and enthusiasm because it combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. To the human eye, orange is a very hot color, so it gives the sensation of heat. Nevertheless, orange is not as aggressive as red. Orange increases oxygen supply to the brain, produces an invigorating effect, and stimulates mental activity. It is highly accepted among young people. As a citrus color, orange is associated with healthy food and stimulates appetite. Orange also has very high visibility, so it commands attention and highlights important ideas.

Of the two words that make up orange:will, orange means vitality with endurance-- a very fitting description of women with diabetes since we are full of life and each of us has had to endure our fair share of challenges. Will (or willpower) means energetic determination. And let's face it-- women with diabetes must exert a significant amount of energetic determination in order to live happy, healthy lives with diabetes.