Working together to reduce inequity and help healthcare professionals better support people living with diabetes
Tackling inequity in diabetes
Community Organisation Advisory Committee (COAC)
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 Community Organisation Advisory Committee (COAC), which Lilly UK have provided sponsorship funding to support (Lilly has had no involvement or influence over the COAC) will work to bring back insights from different 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.
For more information on COAC, visit here.
The Diabetes UK Continuous Professional Development platform
Lilly UK continued their support of our Continuous Professional Development (CPD) platform for healthcare professionals. The platform offers a series of online courses, accredited by the Royal College of Nursing, aimed at giving healthcare professionals the confidence, skills, and resources to better support people living with diabetes.
Since we launched our platform in June 2021, Lilly UK have supported its development with sponsorship funding, enabling us to launch modules such as Emotional Wellbeing, Understanding Diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes Remission and Diabetes Technology. We're continuing to grow the platform with new modules on Type 2 Prevention, Diabetes Complications and more coming up in the pipeline.
We’re very grateful to Lilly UK for their support of this vital work, helping healthcare professionals to provide better diabetes care.
Find out more about our CPD platform here.
Tackling Inequality Commission
In 2023, Lilly supported our first ever Tackling Inequality Commission which brought together an expert panel to determine the biggest challenges for people with diabetes facing health inequality. The findings from the commission are helping us take the steps we need to support people living with diabetes in areas of deprivation, ensuring that everyone can live in a world where diabetes does no harm. Lilly provided funding, but they had no involvement or influence over the commission.
Our partnership continues to evolve in other areas too – Lilly UK were platinum sponsors of our Diabetes UK Professional Conference again in 2025 and we thank them for their ongoing support.
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