In July 2007, a blogger on the Web site TuDiabetes challenged people to write one word on their hand that best expressed their feelings about diabetes. The idea caught on. Soon, people were sending in photos of their hands and explaining why they picked their word, and the Word In Your Hand project was born.
The words chosen displayed a wide range of emotion: fear, hope, awareness, tricky, sad, fight. You can go to this site to see how it all got started and watch a video with some sample hand pictures.
In addition, OneTouch, the maker of blood glucose monitors, now has a Web site, diabeteshandprint.com, that is collecting hand pictures. For each picture submitted, OneTouch donates five dollars toward diabetes research. OneTouch is also featuring five hand-writers in a national ad campaign.
Do you have a word you think best expresses your feelings about diabetes? If so, think about taking some time to draw it on your hand and upload the picture at diabeteshandprint.com — you’ll be supporting diabetes research when you do.
This blog post was written by Assistant Editor David Golann.
