Are you successfully managing your diabetes? Are you interested in helping others do the same? Then you may be interested in being a peer-mentor as part of the A1C Champions group. 

There are 70 of us A1C Champions who live across the country and go across the country – or stay mainly in our local area – giving various presentations to help our fellow patients take better care of themselves, and their diabetes. That’s me above giving an A1C program. I’ve been doing it for 5 years and I find it enormously fulfilling work. 

VPR Communications, the group that trains us to do this work, is actively looking for more Champions. Here are the criteria: 

1) You must use insulin

2) Have an A1C less than 7%

3) Be at least 21 years old

4) Have a strong desire to help others

If interested, you can see more about the program on the A1C Champions web site. If you’re ready, or have any questions, please contact Becky Lodes at becky@vprpop.com or call 855-A1CHAMP (855-212-4267).

The power of the A1C Champion programs is that patients hear how to better manage their diabetes from a patient. Often they will have heard similar information from their health care providers, but when they hear it from you – and they know you live it – they hear it in a completely different way. 

The programs also allow you to share your story, your experiences, what it’s been like for you to live with diabetes and what makes you successful. 

You often become just the missing piece that moves someone to do something for their health that they’ve been putting off for years. 

I’ve given more than 50 programs, sometimes to ten people, sometimes to 200, and somehow I never tire of it.