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BECOME AN INSULLIANCE MENTOR

“My first mentoring experience at Children’s Hospital was invigorating. I felt like I really connected with my mentee. I cannot explain how empowering it is to impact someone’s life for the positive. Diabetes is not always a walk in the park, but by mentoring at Children’s, I hope to remind patients that they are NEVER alone on this journey and inspire them to live well with diabetes.”

- Emily Swide, Former Mentor

What does the program look like?

The Insulliance program has been designed around personalized ‘My Diabetes Books’. Both mentees and mentors will create, maintain, and utilize their own log books to track diabetes management, both physically and mentally. We designed the program in this way because of how the creation of our own diabetes books inspired a drastic change in our overall diabetes health. We hope to move beyond simply monitoring blood sugar numbers, insulin numbers, carbohydrate numbers, and calculation numbers. We will take note of what happened during the day leading up to events related to diabetes, and discuss our response to those events; was it a low day, or a good day? Diabetes is a number game, but a number game that involves the heart. The heart parts need to be explored to ensure a holistic change in diabetes self-care at any age.

 

The program will result in the formation of mentor-to-mentee partnerships built on trust, mutual life experience, and open dialogue. These partnerships will work to inspire a tighter diabetes community within the entire group of participants. Insulliance will utilize personalized ‘My Diabetes Books’ created by participants during the first group meeting.

 

We measure the success by holding social events each month that feature an “update and reflection” session in which all participants explore triumphs and tribulations together in a safe and supportive space. We will get feedback on what parts of the program work, which ones do not, and which are in need of improvement. We expect the participants to report an overall improvement in desire to self-manage.

 

We will also measure success by tracking mentor and mentee’s A1C levels at the beginning of the program, and at the three, six, nine, and twelve month marks. We expect A1C levels to improve rapidly in the beginning and then maintain a healthy range for the remainder of the program while participants further develop their relationship with diabetes.

Interested in applying? Please use one of the links on our homepage.

The material on this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for medical advice from a qualified medical or mental health professional. The individuals associated with Insulliance are not medical or mental health professionals. Insulliance does not endorse any specific treatment centers, physicians, healthcare providers, mental health professionals, tests, products, services, procedures, opinions, or other information that are mentioned on the web site.

Always consult your physician or other qualified healthcare or mental health provider for advice, diagnosis and treatment of any health-related matter, including relating to diabetes and/or eating disorders. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately.

We would like to acknowledge and thank Heather R. Walker, the founder of Insulliance, for all of the energy she directed toward building the first iteration of the program, and for carefully drafting the written materials and guidelines we still rely upon today. We would also like to thank Sarah Afzal (Former President and Mentor), Emily Swide (Former Mentor), and Carrie Stearns (Former Mentor) for their early roles on the team, which were essential to our success.

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