Written by: Brit Hancock. Brit is a disability and health equity advocate from London, Ontario. As someone living with type 1 diabetes and diabetes-related complications, she speaks openly about how stigma shapes healthcare experiences. She is a Research-to-Action Fellow with Diabetes Action Canada, focused on turning lived experience into action.

Returning to In-Person Diabetes Conferences

This past November, I attended the 2025 Diabetes Canada Professional Conference. I was genuinely excited. Being back in a shared space mattered more than I expected. After so much time connecting through screens, it felt meaningful to be together again, listening in real time and learning alongside one another.

As the week unfolded, I became more aware of where that sense of belonging was coming from, and why it mattered. Within our Fellowship group, patient voices felt valued and safe. We learned from one another in ways that were immediate and practical, through late night Zoom calls and early morning WhatsApp conversations.

It made something clear to me. There is a depth of knowledge within patient communities that does not always surface on conference slides or panels, even though it shapes the work in important ways. Conferences bring people together, and that creates an opportunity not only to share research, but also to surface knowledge that already exists within the communities living the reality being discussed.

I really felt this while watching other fellows present their scientific posters developed outside of the Fellowship. We often speak about lived and loved experiences, but standing there and listening to them walk through their work, I was reminded that patient partners bring far more than personal perspective. They are professionals working across research, policy, technology, education, and care. Once someone is labelled as a patient partner, that experience is not always fully heard.

I learned practical things from their projects, insights that I will carry into my own diabetes management and advocacy.

At one point while presenting, a fellow in our cohort, Anmol, said almost in passing, “I’ll be getting my PhD too.” It landed because it named something so many of us live every day. Patient partners are often understood as people who respond or react, while the work we do to lead, design, analyze, and teach is less visible. Standing there, it was clear how much expertise and effort can go unnoticed once someone is placed into a single category.

During the screening of Low Priority, fellows Jeremy and Matt spoke openly about their own experiences in front of a huge auditorium. They did not ask for sympathy, but asked for attention. The panel repeated a simple line: “We are the system.” As the room listened, the tone shifted in a quiet but very noticeable way. It was one of those moments where lived experience changes how people sit with what they think they know.

Learning Beyond the Sessions

Outside of the formal sessions, the learning continued in quieter moments.

Over lunch, fellow Maryann and I were managing dropping blood sugars after a busy morning. At the same time, Amanda was supporting her son from provinces away, guiding his diabetes care through an AID system while staying present in the room. It struck me how much she carries, and how easily that kind of work goes unseen — parenting, professional contribution, advocacy, and constant life-altering decision-making all at once.

That same kind of care showed up again on the final day when a few of us came down with a flu bug. We shared sick-day tips, talked through electrolyte options, and compared what helps when blood sugars are unpredictable and energy is low. In those conversations I learned more about my fellow Wajeeha’s work on ketones and sick-day management, not in a meeting but through care and mutual support.

What surprised me most was how natural all of this felt. I have only met most of my fellow Fellows twice in person as we live across Canada, and yet there we were supporting one another through illness, pump and CGM glitches, and fatigue. Community built through screens and long conversations had become something very real.

These moments might seem small, but together they show the kinds of practical expertise people living with diabetes share every day. Much of diabetes care happens between appointments, and peer learning is often where management strategies become usable in real life.

Why Patient Voices Matter in Conferences

This is why patient voices matter here. Not because they are symbolic, and not because they are there to react, but because they carry forms of knowledge that are difficult to find elsewhere. “Nothing about us, without us” is not just a slogan. It is a practice.

Conferences like this one matter because they create opportunities for learning to move in more than one direction. When patient voices are included meaningfully, research becomes more grounded and care becomes more responsive. The work benefits because it is informed by people who live within the realities being discussed.

Including patient voices is not about adding emotion to science. It is about strengthening it.

People living with diabetes ask different questions, notice different outcomes, and identify practical barriers that may otherwise remain invisible. That leads to more relevant research and more usable care.

In practice, this can look simple. It can mean inviting patient partners into program planning earlier, including them as presenters beyond lived-experience panels, and creating space for conversation rather than only presentation. When dialogue is intentional, the learning becomes shared rather than one-directional.

From Presence to Partnership

There is also so much I have not even touched upon here. I did not speak about the Diabetes Action Canada breakfast, where we presented work created alongside our partner organizations and sparked conversations long after the session ended. That moment mattered to me because it showed how collaboration allows ideas to travel between researchers, clinicians, and people living with diabetes.

Even writing this, I am aware that naming only parts of the experience still feels incomplete, which in many ways reflects the Fellowship itself. It is not defined by a single project or panel. It is built through relationships that continue to grow and shape the work.

That is what stayed with me this week, and why patient voices matter here.