Introducing DiaCAP: The Diabetes Community Advisory Panel
Why We Established DiaCAP | The Value of Different Perspectives | Why I Co-Designed DiaCAP | Our people
To ensure our diabetes research remains relevant, inclusive, and focused on the needs of people living with diabetes, we have established the Diabetes Community Advisory Panel (DiaCAP).
DiaCAP brings together community members with lived experience of diabetes—including people living with diabetes, carers, family members, and supporters—to work alongside researchers and provide valuable insights that help guide our research priorities, projects, and communication. The DiaCAP framework was co-designed with the diabetes community to ensure it reflects the needs, priorities, and expectations of the people it is intended to serve. Through this collaborative approach, community members play an active role in shaping how we engage, partner, and make decisions, helping to create research that is more relevant, inclusive, and impactful for people affected by diabetes.
Why We Established DiaCAP
Diabetes affects millions of people, yet no two experiences are the same. The challenges of living with diabetes can vary widely depending on age, culture, family circumstances, access to healthcare, location, and most of all the diabetes type. We recognised that engaging with a single community member at a time can provide valuable insights, but it cannot fully capture the breadth and diversity of experiences across the diabetes community.
That's why we established the Diabetes Community Advisory Panel (DiaCAP). By bringing together a diverse group of community members, DiaCAP creates a forum where different perspectives can be shared, discussed, and considered collectively. This approach enables researchers to hear a wider range of views, identify common priorities and unmet needs, and better understand where experiences differ across the community.
A panel-based approach also fosters ongoing relationships between researchers and community members, allowing feedback and ideas to evolve throughout the research journey – closing the information gap. Rather than consulting individuals in isolation, DiaCAP provides a collaborative environment where collective lived experience helps shape research priorities, study design, communication, and translation into practice.
By embedding diverse community voices into the research process, DiaCAP helps ensure our research reflects the real-world complexities of diabetes and focuses on outcomes that matter most to people living with the condition, their families, and carers.
The Value of Different Perspectives
Scientific expertise is critical to advancing diabetes research, but lived experience provides insights that cannot be gained in the lab. Community members bring unique perspectives on the daily realities of managing diabetes, navigating healthcare, supporting loved ones, and coping with the social and emotional impacts of the condition.
Through DiaCAP, these voices help shape research questions, improve study design, strengthen the translation of research findings into practice, and ensure our work remains meaningful, accessible, and responsive to community needs.
Together, researchers and community members are building stronger partnerships that will help drive more impactful diabetes research and, ultimately, better outcomes for people affected by diabetes.
Why I Co-Designed DiaCAP
The idea for DiaCAP grew from my own experience establishing and leading the Community and Research Engagement program (CaRE) at STM. Through these partnerships, I gained insights that fundamentally changed how I viewed my research. Community members helped me see challenges and priorities from a different perspective, rethink aspects of my research plan and better align it with the needs of the people it is intended to benefit.
Research can be demanding, with long hours and many challenges along the way. What has continually motivated me is hearing from community members about why this work matters and how research can offer hope for the future. Their willingness to share their experiences, contribute their time, and support my research despite the daily challenges they face reminds me why we do this work and inspires me to work for greater impact.
Co-designing DiaCAP has also been an important learning journey. It has taught me that the best research is not done for people, but with people. Working alongside individuals from different backgrounds, experiences, and circumstances has changed my understanding of the importance of listening, collaboration, and mutual respect. DiaCAP reflects this philosophy—creating a partnership where researchers and community members learn from one another and work together towards a shared goal of improving the lives of people affected by diabetes.