Improving the Lives of All People Affected by Type 2 Diabetes

President of Health Care & Education for the American Diabetes Association (ADA)—how did I get here? Was it purely title and admiration for those who came before me? No. Volunteering for the ADA takes commitment, dedication, and hard work. And I've worked hard to get here.As a young and rather naive student, I was the flat sponge so many educators long for. Students in the final year of my nursing program were given a mandate to go into the community to teach a class on obstetrics, breast-feeding, or diabetes. I chose diabetes. Soon thereafter, I began volunteering for ADA as a student nurse doing presentations in the community. I could not stop at just one presentation; I wanted to know that my efforts made a difference.Moving from the classroom to Los Angeles, Calif., County Hospital as a staff nurse enhanced my ability to do the work I needed to do, both as a public health nurse and as an educator at East Los Angeles College (ELAC). Throughout this transition, I continued to work with a population of socially, financially, and educationally disadvantaged Latinos, Hispanics, and Asian-Pacific Islanders, attempting to focus on what I thought public health was really all about: prevention. My goal was to teach clients how to care for their illnesses and how to prevent recurrence and readmission into the hospital emergency department for problems for which they had received previous treatment. Working with the underrepresented, underserved, disadvantaged, and working poor became a labor of love, teaching families how to improve the quality of their lives.Complications of diabetes can be devastating. I recall having students take care of a 28-year-old Latino man with diabetes. He was what the students recognized as “noncompliant,” and he experienced what many people with diabetes face: denial, sadness, anger, helplessness, …