Beyond Type 1 Receives $300,985 Helmsley Charitable Trust Grant for DKA Awareness Campaign

 2018-09-26

Beyond Type 1 is excited to announce today that we have received a $300,985 grant from The Leona M. and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust to power the next phase of our DKA Awareness Campaign.

Over the past three years, Beyond Type 1 has focused on the prevention of life-threatening diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) at the onset of type 1 diabetes. These efforts began shortly after our organization was founded, when CEO Sarah Lucas published an open letter to the community about the preventable death of 5-year-old Kycie Jai Terry. That letter helped launch Beyond Type 1’s grassroots awareness campaign aimed at providing warning signs posters to schools and communities.

Two years ago, Beyond Type 1 worked with parent advocate Debbie Healy and Leadership Council Member Michelle Berman to launch a campaign with the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. This campaign put print resources in each of their pediatric offices statewide and made digital resources available through a custom web portal. Using this model, to date warning signs resources have reached 22 states, multiple countries, tens of thousands of offices and millions of patients. Alongside that ongoing effort, Beyond Type 1 has worked to tell the stories of preventable deaths from DKA; in May of 2018 we published previouslyhealthy.org, an immersive longform look at the death of 16 month-old Reegan Oxendine.

The grant from Helmsley will allow us to reach a new set of healthcare professionals, expand our state-by-state grassroots awareness efforts and continue to publish real-life stories to raise awareness of DKA. “We look for scalable solutions for problems we think we can solve—and death due to misdiagnosis is one of those. Type 1 diabetes warning signs should be tucked in to the back of everyone’s mind—that is our goal,” said Beyond Type 1 CEO Sarah Lucas. “Education and awareness saves lives. The expansion of this program, thanks to the Helmsley support, is critical and we are grateful for the opportunity and the trust.”

Over the next 12 months, Beyond Type 1 will continue to lead the charge around DKA prevention both in the United States and around the globe.


Read more about Beyond Type 1’s DKA Awareness Campaign.