I Have to Wonder about the ACDE

Yes, I do need to wonder about the Academy of Certified Diabetes Educators. They are being very secretive and not really telling people about their activities. When I did this blog on April 23, 2014, the An Important Legislative Update about the new law in Indiana was already posted. It is now August 14 and the information is now down sometime during the day on August 11.

Attempts to contact two Indiana Legislators failed, but I was able to communicate with two Indiana CDEs on the condition I would not reveal their names. One is working with a brother-in-law and a couple of his friends and the other is working with two female friends to qualify them to work with type 2 people as peer-to-peer diabetes coaches or peer diabetes mentors. All five have type 2 diabetes and have many other type 2 friends they want to help.

As of 1/22/2014, Indiana has 367 CDEs according to the National Certification Board for Diabetes Educators (NCBDE) of 18,401 that are certified as diabetes educators and hold a certificate. This does not tell us anything, as they don't answer these questions:

What the numbers don't tell us:

How many are retired and not working as CDEs.

How many have taken up research work and not working as CDEs.

How many are its officers in ivory towers and not working as CDEs.

How many are on book promotion tours and not working as CDEs.

How many are only working part-time as CDEs.

How many are actually working full-time as CDEs.

There are also others that work as CDEs and RDs and therefore not full-time as CDEs. With all this missing information, it is small wonder that many of us with type 2 diabetes are not seeing or receiving any education from CDEs.  The numbers only tell us how many have passed the CDE examination and hold a certificate.

With the hidden numbers, both CDE organizations can tell us what they want and make it difficult to prove them wrong. When you get to know a few of them, they can be very forthcoming and properly assess us and individualize recommendations. Others make you want to run away and never see them again when they spout mandates and expect us to follow them. Education seldom crosses their lips and they become very agitated when questioned.

Then we come to the dual occupations (CDE and RD) and they follow the USDA and orders of Big Food. They elevate mandates to ridiculous heights and use some slick word trickery to keep patients off guard. They have answers for everything and promote high carbohydrate, low fat with mandates that we must eat a set number of carbohydrates at each meal if we want to be healthy and supply our brain with energy. Then when we learn how wrong they are, we won't listen to them again.

The Academy of Certified Diabetes Educators is already developing a reputation of being exclusive and while they will allow anyone that has taken and passed the NCBDE examination, they are fighting to discredit anyone that can help others learn how to better manage diabetes. We do not have enough educators to educate people with type 2 diabetes and we do not need this 'only certified diabetes educators can teach about diabetes' crap. We don't need the mandates, mantras, and one-size-fits-all that many of the CDEs use.

I wish that the two CDEs I communicated with were not so far away, I think I could learn a lot from them.