Virtual, revamped ADCES conference highlights racial, health disparities in diabetes
The Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists Annual Conference is an all-virtual event for the first time, after unprecedented events forced organizers to quickly pivot and incorporate new themes impacting diabetes outcomes.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and the nation grapples with a summer of civic unrest after the killing of George Floyd, members of the ADCES planning committee have worked to meet the moment, adding a new focus on structural racism, sessions centered on COVID-19 outcomes and health effects of income inequality.
“We had been meeting for close to a year, we developed an entire program, contacted speakers — everything was done — and then the world turned upside down,” Joan Bardsley, MBA, RN, CDCES, FADCES, associate vice president of research and nursing integration at MedStar Health Research Institute and the ADCES Planning Committee chair, told Healio. “We had to make the decision early on, back in the spring: What were we going to do? We changed to a virtual meeting. We went back and looked at how we were going to do it. We ended up revamping the program to include issues very relevant to what is happening in our culture right now.”
The annual meeting, taking place from Thursday to Sunday, will feature more than 60 sessions, with up to 31.5 continuing education credits available, as well as a wide range of education and research posters and research presentations. Conference registrants will also get unlimited, on-demand access to all sessions for 90 days after the end of the virtual conference.
“We tried to keep most of the education theaters and posters,” Bardsley said in an interview. “We worked closely with our industry sponsors. We know our members love the exhibit hall. For them, this might be their only opportunity to have one-on-one conversations with industry representatives, and attendees really value that. We ensured that was built-in.”
The following five content areas will be the framework of the conference: clinical and self-management care integration; inclusive person-centered care; leveraging technology: devices, data and patient-generated health data; psychosocial/behavioral health; and the business side of diabetes.
Bardsley highlighted key sessions for each day:
“Putting the Vision Pillars into Practice in Public and Community Health” (Thursday, 8:45 a.m. CDT) will feature a distinguished panel of speakers, including CDC Director Robert Redfield, MD, addressing the valuable role diabetes care and education specialists play in combating COVID-19.
Uché Blackstock, MD, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, will lead a session on health inequities and structural racism in health care on Friday at 8:45 a.m. CDT.
Anne L. Peters, MD, will discuss barriers to accessing diabetes technology according to insurance coverage and explain how to overcome challenges with language, literacy and numeracy in the use of technology on Saturday (9 a.m. CDT).
Raj Ratwani, MA, PhD, vice president of scientific affairs at MedStar Health, will lead a Sunday session (9 a.m. CDT) on the benefits and challenges with digital health technologies, potential safety challenges and methods for improved implementation and use of digital health tools.
“The committee did a tremendous job to ensure the content is current,” Bardsley said. “We were able to adapt and include a great deal on what is reflected in our culture today, and we are really proud of that. We looked at what we planned early on and we made changes. ... This will all serve us well as educators and providers. We must change what we are doing, increase awareness and increase the conversation.”
Healio and Endocrine Today staff will provide coverage from ADCES 2020, with reports on the sessions, video interviews and more. For more information on the ADCES agenda and registration, visit https://www.ADCES20.org/.
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Tips for getting the most out of ADCES. Available at: https://www.adcesmeeting.org/news/tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-virtual-adces20/. Accessed: Aug. 6.
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