Blue Pier Project

The Blue Pier Project.

World Diabetes Day- November 2012

I'm sat at home, with twitter updating on my phone. I am following the various WDD hashtags and seeing huge numbers of diabetes awareness tweets.

So like SJP in Sex and the City, I got to thinking.............

I would like to do something to raise awareness of diabetes. I love the idea of various monuments and buildings turning blue for the day. Why not turn my local pier blue? In fact why stop there, why not turn all the piers along the south coast of England blue for next years World Diabetes Day?

I imagine this will be a massive undertaking but I feel quite excited about the prospect! It would certainly create interest and once people are interested they are more likely to listen to your message.

Now, I feel quite privileged in that I follow, and I am, in return, followed by many people from the diabetes online community (the DOC). I have been welcomed into the community as an honorary Type 3 (thats a person who has someone in their life with diabetes!). In return I would love to do something to help these fabulous guys and girls out in their journey for better care and greater understanding of the lifelong condition they live with.

It seems to me, that as a community, their knowledge and expertise is often greatly under-utilised. And from my own experience, diabetes education in pre-registration training can sometimes leave a lot to be desired.

So I have thought long and hard about what could be done that isn't already being done (or that might be being done but isn't very well advertised!).

Here are my thoughts:

• Raising awareness - in particular amongst health care professionals
• There needs to be better integration of services between primary and acute care and other services such Ambulance Trusts (im thinking a sort of link project - similar to those that operate for nurses within some hospitals, but extending this to make it more multi-disciplianry)
• Using the knowledge and expertise of people with diabetes to guide education of health care professionals.
• Support services. In particular a service for what I call the plus 1's or Type 3's - the people living with those with diabetes.
• Events such as world diabetes day - turning the piers blue! Also maybe getting local businesses involved (I'm thinking of places like my health club) in hosting awareness sessions.
• And my personal favourite - a blue flash mob! Ive always said (you can ask my friends and family!) that the world would be a better place if we had more flash mobs!

So these are my thoughts. Very rough and read at the moment and im contemplating how I can action them. I figured by sharing them I could get some input from others on how to take this forward.

As a starting point, the Blue Pier Project now has a twitter account (@BluePierProject) and an email address - bluepierproject@live.com.

All thoughts, ideas, comments welcome :)