It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it. And by ‘hot’ I mean sweltering here in Melbourne. While my friends in the northern hemisphere are sharing snow photos, we’ve been dealing with days in the high 30s and 40s. (For my US friends – we hit almost 120°F this month. It was not nice.) 

Anyway, now that the weather discussions are over, let me wish you all a belated happy new year. I’d like to say that I hope that your start to 2026 has been gentle and kind, but instead, picture me gesturing wildly at the world and shaking my head in despair. 

I finished up 2025 feeling pretty damn exhausted and burnt out. But, really, who wasn’t feeling that way? There was a lot of good stuff that I could look back on, but the never-ending travel wore me out. I feel compelled to say that I know I am fortunate to do the work I do, and I love my job. Being able to work with people in the diabetes community who are making real change is a gift every single day. I would just be so happy if someone could find out a way for Australia to not be a 30-hour trip away from most of the places I need to visit. 

I was lucky to have a three-week break over the Christmas/New Year period where I travelled no further than 5kms from my house, and I’ll have had a 10-week hiatus before I next find myself in an airport. Both of these breaks feel like a luxury!

But as we gear up for 2026, it’s undeniable that the global health world is in a mess and diabetes is not immune to that. I’m really pleased that some of my work will involve addressing issues that are important to people with diabetes. I’m beyond honoured to have been invited to give the Anita Carlson lecture at this month’s Psychosocial Aspects of Diabetes (PSAD) Conference (even happier that it’s being held in a regional city in my state and I only have to drive for an hour to get there!). I’ve called my lecture ‘Building Diabetes Healthcare from the Ground Up’ and it’s given me an opportunity to imagine just what diabetes healthcare could be if people with diabetes were actually centred and involved in its creation. 

Next month the first Global Summit to End Diabetes Stigma is being held in Jaipur, India. Can you imagine hundreds of people with or working in diabetes coming together in one place to come up with meaningful and real strategies to end stigma? For disclosure purposes, this event is being funded via a grant from Breakthrough T1D (I work there), and I am involved in the planning of the event. It feels like a culmination of a lot of efforts highlighting the impact of stigma to get to a place where the diabetes world is ready to collaborate to end it. I’m so thrilled to be working for the organisation that has recognised that.

For me right now though, there is an overarching feeling that the world really is burning. While the US gets a lot of our attention, diabetes healthcare and access to insulin and care remains incredibly lacking in other parts of the world. As always, the most vulnerable in our world are impacted the most negatively. I don’t know about you, but a lot of the time I feel helpless.

Now it’s February, you may have once again seen that the annual Spare a Rose campaign has started. I think this is the fourteenth year of the campaign. I think back to what the diabetes community was like when Spare a Rose first started, and honestly, it feels very different to what we have today. I don’t know if a campaign like this would be started in today’s community. In fact, sometimes I find it harder and harder to find community and advocacy these days, as “influencer culture” takes hold. 

And so, it’s worth remembering where Spare a Rose came from and the intentions behind it. It was a group of advocates in the US who wanted to give back somehow. I should point out that the advocates who started Spare a Rose had already given so much to the community. Many of them have taken a back seat to front-facing advocacy efforts but their legacies live on, even if fewer and fewer people see how they shaped the DOC. It’s diabetes advocates who have driven this campaign over the years and made sure that it has remained in the view of people with diabetes.

I have always loved the simplicity of Spare a Rose. The donation being asked for is small – US$5. For those needing a refresher, the idea is to give your loved one eleven rather than twelve roses and donate the saving to the campaign. In our house, we forgo flowers completely and recognise that empty vases are a small price to pay for making a donation to the value of a year’s worth of insulin. 

I know that many are doing it tough these days. I also know that a lot of people who would have donated without a second thought in the past are unable to do so now due to changes of circumstances in so-called high-income countries.

But if you can support Spare a Rose by making a donation, please do. All funds go directly to the brilliant charity Insulin for Life, and each contribution makes a difference to a person with diabetes in a low-income country. If you can’t make a financial contribution, please share the website across your networks. Someone else in there might be able to donate. Every single dollar counts. 

Click to donate!