Updates

Diabetes and Endocrinology

 Community Diabetes Care

The Texas Children’s Diabetes and Endocrinology Care Center works to provide comprehensive care for our patients with diabetes. Through our Community Diabetes Care outreach efforts, we create, sponsor and host community events that reach families beyond the clinic walls and let us build more meaningful relationships with them.

Community Diabetes Care consists of multiple initiatives that include:

  • Providing support and empowerment for individuals and families living with diabetes
  • Providing diabetes education for families and school nurses
  • Advocacy for insurance coverage of diabetes technology

Community Diabetes Care is a multidisciplinary process team that is co-led by Bonnie McCann-Crosby, MD and Katelyn Yzquierdo, MS, RD, CSP, LD. 

What we offer

Monthly Events 

  • Our Social Group is a virtual meetings for parents and adolescents with diabetes. Our lively discussions cover a variety of topics, including counting carbs, exercise management, diabetes burnout, disaster preparedness, insulin pump troubleshooting and living a resilient life with diabetes. Our amazing speakers have including a former NFL football player with type 1 diabetes and a NASA scientist. Meetings are held eight months per year, with breaks taken in June, July, November and October.  Click to learn more and register for our Social Group.

Yearly Events

These events aim to foster community between the Texas Children’s endocrine team and patients, provide education to families on diabetes technology and research, and allow those who are living with type 1 diabetes to connect with others who have this health condition.

  • We host several patient and family diabetes events, including our “Diabetes Spring Fling” at Holcomb Family YMCA in Spring, Texas, which is an outdoor event for our patients and their families in a diabetes-friendly environment. The event features games, face-painting, food trucks and crafts. 
  • We also host a Diabetes fall festival-style event called “DIA-BOO-TES BASH” at the Houston Health Museum in Houston. Patients and families can enjoy games, snacks, costume contests, face painting, pumpkin painting, trick-or-treating and interacting with our diabetes vendors. 
  • Our division shows support for our patients by participating annually at the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) Houston walk, usually in November. 
  • We also provide medical staff services at the annual American Diabetes Association Camp Rainbow, which is a day camp for children with Type 1 diabetes.  Sheila Gunn, MD is the camp medical director.
  • For school nurses, we offer an annual conference on diabetes management that provides those in the profession with updates on current treatment options for diabetes including technology such as insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors, how to calculate insulin doses, and how to manage high and low blood sugars.  View this conference on-demand on our website here.

Additionally, we are actively engaged in advocacy for insurance coverage of diabetes technology, including continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps. We want to ensure that our patients can receive equitable care no matter what type of insurance they have.