Across our nation and around the globe, everyone knows someone with diabetes. During this special season of hope, for the family and friends of a loved one with this disease, the deepest hope is for the cure.  Diabetes has become an epidemic worldwide.  More than 26 million Americans are afflicted and living under the threat of its complications of blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, stroke and amputation of limbs.  By uniting, by working together, by giving from our hearts, we will defeat diabetes.

I appeal to you to give in support of our annual Reaching for the Brass Ring Campaign for the Cure.  Every single gift makes a difference.   Your generosity will give 6,000 children and adults at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes a better quality of life today and renewed hope to millions more that we are committed to ending this epidemic.

For more than three decades, the physicians and health professionals at the Barbara Davis Center have served with skill and compassion to give children and adults with type 1 diabetes the highest quality care regardless of ability to pay – all made possible by your donations. Recently U.S. News & World Report ranked Children’s Hospital Colorado (with the Barbara Davis Center as its diabetes group) #4 in diabetes/endocrinology in the U.S.  Your gifts also help fund the world-class research programs at the Center, our best hope for the cure and prevention.

Less than a century ago, people diagnosed with diabetes were given a year to live.  The outlook changed with the discovery of insulin in 1922.  But, insulin is not a cure.  In the past 34 years, accelerated progress has been made in care and research within our Center and through the BDC working hand-in-hand with physicians and scientists internationally.

For those whom you love and care about now living with this burden, will you remember them in this time of giving by helping us grasp that brass ring: the cure?

Much appreciation,

           
Barbara Davis
Chairman
Children’s Diabetes Foundation