Providing Education and Support to Children and Families Living with Type 1 Diabetes

Thanks to the generosity of a Canadian donor, Myriad Canada is working with Children with Diabetes to improve the quality of life of all people and families living with type 1 diabetes by providing education and the most current thinking in evidence-based medicine through their online platforms and conferences.

Children with Diabetes (CWD) is a US-based non-profit organization that provides education and support to families living with type 1 diabetes. From its simple beginnings online in June of 1995, CWD has grown to become one of the best known organizations in the type 1 diabetes community. 

New Friends for Life at the annual Orlando conference, 2019

Its Friends for Life Orlando conference, held each July at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Florida, is the largest family-focused diabetes conference in the world, drawing over 2,000 people for the week-long event in normal years. CWD also hosts meetings at global diabetes conferences, bringing together key opinion leaders from the type 1 diabetes community to share cutting edge research and diabetes care strategies to improve care to children and adults throughout the world.

Leigh’s Story

“My daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of three.  And, since that diagnosis nearly  8 years ago, we’ve had some of the hardest moments of our lives.  We’ve learned that diabetes is unpredictable and relentless.  We’ve learned that diabetes doesn’t take sick days and doesn’t understand the importance of family vacations. We’ve learned that even the best laid plans can be disrupted by the tiniest bend in a small plastic cannula in an insulin pump site.  We’ve learned that insulin is not a cure and that no matter how many sleepless nights we have, we may never be able to figure out how to truly manage this disease.  We’ve felt moments of sadness, of hopelessness, of fear about what comes next for our daughter and we constantly worry about her future.  In our darkest times, diabetes sometimes feels like it’s taken the best of us.  All of us.  The whole family.

Leigh’s daughter (left) at the FFL Orlando conference in 2019.

In those hard times and those moments of uncertainty, there’s one thing that pulls us to the light every single time—Children with Diabetes.  CWD is more than just a website about diabetes. It’s an organization that has literally saved our lives so many times and taken us from feeling sad and alone to feeling like we are surrounded by a great big diabetes family that loves us for every single high and low that diabetes brings to us each day. From the very first night of my daughter’s diagnosis, CWD has been a source of information to our family and has helped us to see that diabetes is not the end of us, it’s just the beginning.  Children with Diabetes has given us hope and has connected us with the friends that have become our family.  

Until there’s a cure, there’s Friends for Life.  Because of CWD, what was our darkest moment has become one of the best parts of our lives.  We’ve replaced that initial sadness with unending happiness because CWD helps us to know that we are not alone on this journey, we are loved, and we are part of a great big worldwide diabetes family.  For life.”

For more information on Children with Diabetes, visit https://childrenwithdiabetes.com