Renewing Our Commitment to Patient Engagement

We are redoubling our efforts to reach underserved communities by revitalizing our patient engagement initiative. Through our clinical work and research, we are well aware that health disparities have a significant impact on individuals with diabetes and other endocrine conditions. As a community, we are determined to do all we can to break down those barriers and improve access to care.

Moving forward, we plan to hold up to four in-person EndoCares® patient outreach days in various cities each year, twice as many events as in the past. EndoCares® has hosted in-person health education events for thousands of people in underserved communities since 2016, and we look forward to reaching even more through our expanded program. Our focus will be on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion by hosting events for underserved communities.

We will bring our experts directly to diverse communities, beginning in Atlanta, Ga., in June, in conjunction with ENDO 2022.  We hope to facilitate access to the care that the residents need on an ongoing basis. We also plan to host events in Baltimore, San Francisco, and Seattle. We are looking for local volunteers to support these events. Please reach out to us and fill out our volunteer form if you’d like to participate.

For more than two decades, we have worked to help patients, their families, and the public understand the endocrine system and its impact on their health. I am grateful to our many volunteers who served on the Patient Engagement Committee and its forerunners. Your ideas helped us create a robust digital presence filled with trusted health resources and our EndoCares® program.

We are now building on that strong foundation and expanding our patient engagement work. We have unified our digital materials, including our Endocrine Library, under our primary brand. This will bolster our reputation as trusted sources of public health information and showcase the role you, our valued members, play in developing evidence-based materials for consumers.

You will be able to find educational materials to share with your patients on our new digital hub. This hub houses our Endocrine Library and other resources. It is also the home of our revamped Menopause Map, which launched last month. We will be moving our video vault and clinical trial recruitment resources here in the coming months.

I am grateful to our Patient Engagement Committee members — led by Christine M. Burt Solorzano, MD —for their role overseeing this transition. Many thanks to J. Sonya Haw, MD, and Priyathama Vellanki, MD, who will serve as local hosts for our debut event in Atlanta.

It is so satisfying to be able to use our scientific and medical expertise to give back and advance public health. These programs can help us make a real difference and improve the lives of individuals with endocrine conditions and their families. I hope you will join me in volunteering time and expertise to make our expanded patient outreach efforts successful. I welcome your comments and suggestions on how we can continue to strengthen our engagement with our patients.