This could be one of the most important job ads posted in diabetes care right now.
Job title: Fixer to Help A Diabetes Organization Actually Represent Its Members & The People They Serve
Location: Wherever people with diabetes are trying to afford insulin, find decent care, and live their lives.
Schedule: Full time. Unfortunately, diabetes does not take any time off. Weekend and holiday flexibility required.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Our Diabetes Community is seeking qualified applicants to replace the current approach to running one of the most influential diabetes organizations in the country.
Instead of the current unaccountable, censoring executive leadership, our D-Community wants an organizational approach that might seem a bit unconventional:
Listening to the people it’s supposed to represent.
Successful candidates should be able to:
- Support diabetes research, even when the research makes powerful people uncomfortable.
- Respect physicians, researchers, diabetes educators, and clinicians who spend their careers trying to make diabetes care better.
- Listen to people actually living with diabetes.
- Understand that membership organization generally means the members should have some say in how the organization operates.
- Believe that an independent investigation should involve someone who is, in fact, independent.
- Understand that transparency is more than issuing a press release.
- Recognize that protecting an institution's reputation should never be more important than protecting the people that institution claims to serve.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Applicants must possess:
- Common sense
- Accountability
- A functioning relationship with reality
- Preferably, an ability to say: “We screwed this up. Here is how we are going to fix it...” without requiring three committees, a press release, and a carefully worded statement about moving forward together.
WHY IS THIS POSITION OPEN?
A whole lot of bullshit is why this job is even being posted.
Bottom line: The American Diabetes Association isn’t accountable, it tried to censor key members on an important topic in plain site, it then tried to sweep it under the rug while laughably claiming it supports free speech, and then continuing to censor the diabetes care community while shrugging its shoulders.
In other words, they are trying to actively go against what’s best for those of us who live with diabetes while continuing to fundraise off of our lives and lazy pancreases.
To hell with the current ADA.
Now, some of the incredible people who’ve spent decades building diabetes research and care are saying they’ve had enough.
These diabetes leaders have announced a boycott of ADA activities and called for an independent, externally led review of the organization and its leadership structure.
These are not random outsiders who wandered into the fight looking for something to complain about. They include longtime ADA leaders, researchers, journal editors, and people who have devoted much of their professional lives to diabetes.
In other words, the people who know this organization best are telling us something is seriously wrong.
And they are not walking away because they do not care. They are doing it because they care enough to demand that the organization change.
NOW HERE IS WHERE PEOPLE WITH DIABETES COME IN
This is not just a fight for doctors and researchers.
It’s about us.
The people living with diabetes have a pretty big interest in whether the orgs shaping diabetes research, clinical guidance, education, and policy are actually accountable to the people they are supposed to represent.
So your next step is to ask this question:
"What do you think about the ADA boycott?"
- Ask your doctor.
- Ask your endocrinologist.
- Ask your diabetes educator.
- Ask other diabetes clinicians.
- Ask your pump or CGM rep.
- Ask the people who help you manage this disease every single day.
Tell them you support it.
If they agree the org needs a serious reset, ask them to join this effort.
We all can join this effort, too. Just sign on to the boycott through this Google Doc.
Because maybe it is time we stop treating this like somebody else's professional dispute.
It's our diabetes.
It’s our care.
It’s our future.
#WeAreNotWaiting for the ADA to create another investigative committee to study its own self-inflicted wounds and failings.
Since our health and our wallets are the ones on the line, we all need to sign onto this effort and encourage our diabetes care teams to do the same because it's in our best interests.