09/14/2026
I created this image crying. 😭
That little girl is me. Standing behind me is my grandmother.
Long before I became a founder, diabetes was already part of my story.
At around 9 years old, living in a remote part of Belize, I learned to administer insulin to my grandmother. My aunt, her primary caregiver, was at school, and sometimes I was the only one home. I took that responsibility with pride.
She passed not too long after following a diabetic coma.
Years later, my maternal grandmother — Granny P, a name many of you know because I went on to build a business in her name — was diagnosed with prediabetes in Canada.
Caring for her made me ask hard questions:
Why didn’t diabetes education reflect our food, our culture or our realities?
Those questions stayed with me.
In 2018, I founded Type Diabeat-It.
And today, I get to say something that little girl could never have imagined:
OUR WORK IS NOW PUBLISHED RESEARCH. 😭
Grassroots organizations are constantly asked: Where’s the evidence? Where’s the data? How do you know it works?
But research takes money, expertise, time and capacity — things small community organizations rarely have enough of.
That’s why this is BIG.
And I have to BIG UP Cornelius K. A. Pienaah. 👏🏾 Cornelius did the work — listening to our community, conducting the research, analyzing the data and helping bring these lived experiences into academic literature.
To everyone who participated and trusted us with your story: this belongs to you too.
As a founder, research isn’t validation that our work matters. Our community has shown us that for years. It’s a tool to strengthen our work, hold ourselves accountable and make it harder for systems to overlook what communities have been saying all along.
Real people. Raw data. Lived experience. Published research.
Type Diabeat-It and Granny P’s have very different missions, but both trace back to family, culture, food and the women who shaped me.
That little girl had no idea where this would lead.
Today, somewhere inside me, she’s whispering:
“You believe me now?” 😭❤️ Research: https://link.sprin
