Amparo Gonzalez
Senior Director Global Professional Education
Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Care Companies
Transforming Diabetes Care and Education
Since becoming a patient educator in an Atlanta hospital in the early ’90s, Amparo Gonzalez, RN, MPH, CDE, FAADE has spent the last 20 plus years dedicated to spreading and improving diabetes care through education for people with diabetes and the HCPs caring for them.
In that time, she has served as the Co-founder and Director of the Georgia Latino Diabetes Education Program; worked as a researcher in the Department of Endocrinology at Emory University School of Medicine; and was elected President of the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE). And yet, that barely scratches the surface of her work.
For instance, at Emory she developed a program called the Emory Latino Diabetes Education Program (ELDEP) in 2006 that continues to this day. As part of the model, they would visit satellite clinics associated with Grady Health System that served large Latino populations to assess, design, and implement diabetes self-management programs for Latinos.
Then, as the AADE’s President, Amparo worked to spread the global footprint of the organization. She traveled the world (including Taiwan, China, Australia, Mexico, and Europe) teaching the “AADE 7 Self-Care Behaviors of Diabetes Education” and encouraging others to adopt this framework.
In Amparo’s most recent role at the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute, she creates the strategy to transform diabetes care through education to HCPs. In the past 10 years, the institute has delivered globally 200,000 memorable interactions through online and in-person programs. These programs include collaborations with academic institutions and targets NPs, PAs, PCPs, CDEs, pharmacists, and case managers. For instance, they have already trained 150 Walmart pharmacists who will replicate this education to their pharmacists around the country. They also adapt the program to fit other countries around the world. And that has lead to Amparo’s work in China to help make diabetes education the second specialty in nursing there. But even all of this isn’t enough for her.
“We still need to find a solution for access and action to that person with diabetes who is in-between doctor’s visits, struggling to manage their diabetes by themselves,” Amparo explains. “That’s what I am focusing on right now.”
