Changing the Conversation around Diabetes
System Change
Developmental Evaluation
Every three-minutes someone in Canada is diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes-related stigma, misconceptions, and apathy arise from people's understanding and assumptions about the chronic condition, formed through cultural norms, fear, misinformation, historical influences, and other aspects of socialization.
Enter Diabetes Canada’s Change the Conversation (CTC), an initiative that seeks to transform how Canadians communicate and act on diabetes by mobilizing knowledge and innovative programs that shift language, values, and beliefs, so people with diabetes feel more seen, valued, and supported. The idea is ambitious, and the path is being flagged as we travel it.
I was brought in as the initiative's developmental evaluator to support sensemaking and integrate useful learning as the team innovates through complexity. I track developments in CTC activities, design and implement evaluative practices in step with small-scale, low-risk experimental interventions, and facilitate ongoing reflection that deepens cross-functional integration and co-creative practice.
The messiest parts are holding the bigger picture of system-level change while the team navigates the activation of a game-changing initiative, ensuring that people with lived experience of diabetes continue to be engaged early and often, that learning is being reflected in the work rather than bolted on after, and that the team's capacity to hold a developmental mindset is nurtured as we go.
What is shifting over time is the team's relationship to complexity and how data-informed iteration can support decision making, strategy adaptation, and advance work toward their goals. The initiative is unfurling through intentional intervention design, thoughtful engagement, and strategic alliance building.
The work is now oriented toward its most ambitious question: how to identify, understand, and amplify patterns of positive change across levels of scale, improving the day-to-day experiences, dignity, and wellbeing of people with diabetes and shifting Canada's narrative about diabetes for good.
