Diabetes has been a big part of my life for a long time, but during my fall semester of my senior year at university in my International Social Work class, I decided to focus on diabetes and access to resources, specifically insulin. As I began my research, I quickly realized that the subject I picked had a lack of reviewed journals and data on the subject. I found a few, but they were extremely difficult to locate and many were outdated. Although I had friends who volunteered with international diabetes organizations and talked about their experiences and what they learned, I was not able to use this information as a credible source for my paper. I had first or second hand knowledge, videos, and blogs but they did not count for peer reviewed articles even though they say so much and help give a picture of the situation.

I soon discovered that it would be difficult to focus on access to diabetes resources in one specific country like I initially planned. I worked with my professor and completely adjusted how I looked at the paper. I was able to pull overall healthcare data from the specific country I focused on and then added overall diabetes and insulin access data from articles focusing on various developing countries. I had to talk about these two topics separately in my paper and I had make assumptions to back up the experiences I knew of and the videos and articles I had found. This was frustrating and it made me realize the need for more data about this topic worldwide.

During my senior year I approached several of my professors not only for assistance with my paper, but for a personal reason: my health insurance. I had been facing battles with my own health insurance for years, and I was searching for resources and advice. I was again faced with a situation where it was difficult to find the specific information I needed to back up what I knew. The co-pays and various fees I had to pay for my health insurance were outrageous. My insurance did not cover eye appointments, anything to do with mental health, well visits, or vaccinations, and it barely covered an insulin pump or CGM. I had to jump through hoops of paperwork and endless forms to prove I needed not just my diabetes supplies and care but also all my other medical needs. The insurance company told me that I only needed to check my blood sugar a certain number of times per day, which limited my test strips, and they questioned how much insulin I needed.