In 2025, we will be launching a new Community Organisation Advisory Committee (COAC) which will guide and drive our work with under-served communities.
Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly) has provided sponsorship funding to support the Community Organisation Advisory Committee. Lilly has had no involvement in or influence over the Community Organisation Advisory Committee.
Diabetes does not affect everyone equally. We see unfair and avoidable differences in care for people of Black and South Asian ethnicity, as well as those living in deprivation. We also see far more people from these communities developing type 2 and gestational diabetes.
We know that we have not always been able to reach enough people in these communities and recognise we need to be willing to adapt and change to do this. To do this, we need to work with community leaders and organisations, to hear directly from the communities themselves and to create space to make sure they are able to drive our work to tackle the barriers to equality of care for all people living with diabetes.
Our health inequity work so far
As an organisation we began our journey to tackle this inequity in 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic highlighting how where you are born, live, grow, your ethnicity and everything that surrounds you has a huge impact on your chance of living a healthy life.
Since then we have campaigned for access to vital care in the NHS, for healthier food environments, and for access to the latest technology for people living with diabetes. We have worked to ensure that diabetes research benefits everyone, and that new treatments are rolled out across all people living with diabetes fairly.
Our 2023 Tackling Inequality Commission brought together lived experience testimonies with frontline medical expertise, policymakers and researchers to understand how we and others needed to adapt and work differently to ensure everyone living with and at risk of diabetes can access the care and support they need.
How the COAC will work
The COAC will meet four times a year, to provide guidance and challenge us to ensure our work supports their communities and addresses their specific needs. Between meetings they will be kept informed via regular communications on our work and offered opportunities to be involved in different projects depending on their capacity and particular skills and interests.
They will have the ability to bring back insights from their communities, enabling us to react to concerns and support safe information sharing via their networks. These insights will allow us to shape our work around the needs of their community.
What about organisations who do not sit on COAC?
We will be offering community organisations the opportunity to join our Communities in Action (CiA) mailing list.
CiA is a vibrant community network made up of individuals affected by or at risk of diabetes. It’s not a peer support group, but a platform to help us, at Diabetes UK, connect with people with lived experience.
By signing up to CiA, organisations can help share opportunities for their community to have their say, as well as hear about our support and information on diabetes and training opportunities for staff and volunteers.If you would like to get involved with the COAC, join CiA or just understand more about this work, please email involvement@diabetes.org.uk
