On this episode of DO.fm: Advocacy Edition we welcome Lenard Markman, DO to discuss his involvement in championing the creation of Dillon's Law in Wisconsin and how those efforts are being taken to the national stage.
This transcript was created with the aid of automatic speech recognition technology.
Steve Legault: Hello, and welcome to the ACOFP DO.FM Advocacy podcast. I'm Steve Legault, the Director of Knowledge, Learning and Assessment and host for this episode.
Today, we're going to talk about an impactful story that began with tragedy, but transformed into an advocacy movement which has resulted in Dillon's law in Wisconsin, and with continued advocacy may find its way to the national level.
We're welcoming Lenard Markman, DO onto the podcast today as he was integral in getting this legislation passed.
Dr. Markman is a retired Osteopathic family physician in Wisconsin, and a member of ACOFP, welcome to the podcast Dr. Markman.
Dr. Markman: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Steve Legault: Alright. So for those that don't know about Dillon and why this began, can you give us some background on who he was and what happened to him?
Dr. Markman: Sure, actually, it's almost 10 years to this date. Dillon Mueller was a very healthy 18 year old young man in rural Wisconsin. He was an eagle scout and captain of the football team. He never had any health problems. He was actually helping one of his friends with yard work when he gets stung by a bee, a single bee. He got short of breath. Developed hives. He got weak. He had his friend call 911, and the first responders were there right away. But they did not have epinephrine. They did not have the medication they needed to save his life. By the time paramedics came from the nearby city. It was too late, he did not survive. His parents are very proud that he was an organ tissue donor, and over 30 people have benefited from his final gift.
Steve Legault: Thank you for that recap and background on the story. Can you tell me a little bit about how this evolved from like such a tragedy, and moved into a movement to make sure epinephrine is easily or more easily accessible.
Dr. Markman: Sure Wisconsin, Osteopathic association connected with Dillon's parents and we worked on creating what's called Dillon's law in Wisconsin.
This law lets anybody take an anaphylaxis training course get certified, take their certificate directly to the pharmacist and obtain epinephrine and use it wherever they go, and they're covered under state Good Samaritan law. This has been very popular legislation went through a hundred percent bipartisan.
We then created what's called the do it for Dillon anaphylaxis training program to date. We've trained over 5,000 people in Wisconsin, and 15 lives have been saved by people who've taken our course.
Steve Legault: You mentioned the State Society. How did you personally get involved in, you know, moving that legislation forward?
Dr. Markman: So I was actually president of the Wisconsin Osteopathic Association at that time and we decided we were the 1st professional organization to actually offer full support for to Dillon's parents, and we weren't sure exactly what to do and Dillon's parents actually had been thinking about trying to make epinephrine available over the counter and that didn't seem like a good possibility. We...
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