Why OGTT Screenings Should Not Take Place Between the 1st and 5th Days of any Month

This past Saturday, 36 patients were scheduled to attend our OGTT screening. As per the usual protocol, our DPP staff called people at risk for diabetes weeks in advance. The head DPP provider also called to confirm their attendance a few days before the screening. Despite repeated efforts to ensure a full house, only 17 patients were in their chairs that December 4th morning.

As is the DPP’s custom, the lead provider took a few minutes at the close of the screening to consider what worked and didn’t work. She directed her attention to the attendance. While most of the DPP staff were perplexed, the clinic’s social worker was incredulous.

“Today is December 4th! What did you expect?”

Silence. No one understood what the social worker was getting at.

She sighed and made another attempt to explain, “It’s when everyone gets their checks.”

In Connecticut, state aid, including SNAP and other entitlements, is distributed on the first day of every month. Federal aid, SSI, arrives on the third. By then, the social worker continued to expound, people’s pantries, bank accounts, and access to credit, have dried up. It is on the first Saturday of the month, after their checks have arrived and the work week has slowed down, that many Fair Haven residents go grocery shopping, and run around town paying their light, electricity, phone bills.

“Not to mention, November was a 5-week month. Extra long, and extra hard.”

Needless to say, we won’t be scheduling OGTT screenings on the first Saturday of the month moving forward.