Hometown Advocacy

Resources for Association local volunteer leaders and staff sharing our Advocacy priorities and accomplishments, and recruiting and engaging new advocates in your community.

Advocacy Goals of the Association

  • Increase federal and state funding for diabetes research and programs
  • Prevent diabetes
  • Improve the availability of accessible, adequate and affordable health care
  • Eliminate discrimination against people with diabetes at school, work, and elsewhere in their lives 
  • In all areas, there is an ongoing commitment to ending health disparities. 

Including Advocacy at Local Events and Programs

Easy Advocacy Checklists for Association Events

These one-page event-specific checklists are designed to be a quick guide for local volunteers and staff to use in planning how to include Advocacy messaging, materials and engagement activities at Association events and programs. Each checklist includes both basic and advanced practice suggestions, as well as timeline information about ordering materials and making logistical arrangements.

Messaging Tools

Marketing tools, advocacy stories, and key message documents that you can use to show your event participants how advocacy delivers on our mission, and improves the lives of people living with and at risk for diabetes. Watching our "case for support" video is a great place to start learning about the importance of diabetes advocacy:

Resources: How to Present and Talk About Diabetes Discrimination

Our Legal Advocacy Department receives approximately 200 calls each month from people who have diabetes and have been treated unfairly (diabetes discrimination). We know many more people have been affected, but don’t know about diabetes discrimination and how the American Diabetes Association can help. To help increase awareness—when you have the opportunity to speak about this topic—we have developed "Know Your Rights" resources. They are available in three, short lengths—created to fit the various opportunities you will have at meetings, conferences and events. 

Check out advocacy messaging tools now.

If you have questions about using these resources or want more information about how to speak about diabetes discrimination, please call us at 1-800-DIABETES (800-342-2383) or send an email to askada@diabetes.org.

Recruiting Advocates

Materials for building a stronger base of local advocacy support, including recruiting new grassroots advocates, and recruiting attorneys and health care professionals to advocate for people with diabetes through our Legal Advocacy Networks.

  • Petition Form: Federal Funding — For use at Association events. Focus: Urge congress to expand funding for diabetes research and prevention programs.
  • Petition Form: Safe at School — For use at Association events. Focus: Urge elected officials that children with diabetes should be medically safe at school and have equal educational opportunity.
  • Petition Form: Health Disparities — For use at Association events: Focus: Support public policies to eliminate health disparities, improve access to diabetes prevention and care, and improve diabetes research in minority populations.
  • Petition Form: Latino Health Disparities (Spanish) — For use at Association events: Focus: Support public policies to eliminate health disparities, improve access to diabetes prevention and care, and improve diabetes research in Latino populationss. This form is in Spanish ONLY.
  • Business Card Recruitment Tool Talking Points — This document gives instruction and information to assist you in the distribution of the new business card recruitment tool. This tool will enable us to expand our Legal Advocacy attorney and health care professional networks providing us with more of these professionals to assist with discrimination issues.

Local Market Planning

Communication and coordination with key advocacy players is essential in planning and implementing advocacy at Association events. Information on reaching out to and forming your advocacy team, and tools for planning local strategy and activities.

Check out hometown advocacy planning resources now.

Training Webinars

Each year our local staff and volunteers are invitied to participate in live broadcast webinars on a variety of topics related to local advocacy outreach and engagement. Recordings of these webinars can be viewed at anytime.

Check out training webinars for hometown advocates now.

Key Advocacy Handouts

  • Last Reviewed: February 28, 2018
  • Last Edited: March 1, 2018