Explore our advocacy
About our advocacy
Breakthrough T1D advocacy is critical to advancing breakthroughs for the entire T1D community. With the support of our grassroots advocates, our work helps advance treatments, influence policy, and improve access to care for those all over the world who need it.
How we do it
Breakthrough T1D has opportunities for everyone in the T1D community to use their voice in support.
Together We Can
Together We Can connects our grassroots advocates with Members of Congress to advance our key issues. Advocacy leaders from all over the country meet in the Members’ home states—bringing together local individuals and families—to share their personal connections to T1D articulating the emotional, financial, and physical costs of the condition and encouraging support for our positions.
Children’s Congress
Youth delegates, ages 4 – 17, selected from the across the U.S. and our international affiliates travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with lawmakers to share their personal stories of living with T1D and explain the importance of federal funding for T1D research.
Young Adult Advocacy Council
The Young Adult Advocacy Council is a group of young adults, ages 18 –26, who are business professionals, community leaders, and engaged students who actively support the advancement of Breakthrough T1D’s advocacy agenda.
Regulatory frameworks that promote innovation
The next generation of therapies for type 1 diabetes (T1D) will be revolutionary. Breakthrough T1D is working today to ensure those therapies have a clear and reasonable pathway from research to approval anywhere in the world.
What we’re advocating for
Advocacy is critical to Breakthrough T1D’s ability to lead the way to improving lives today while working toward making this disease a thing of the past.
These are the principles and programs we stand behind to help ensure a future without T1D—and a present where people with this condition can live healthy, full lives.
Special Diabetes Program
The Special Diabetes Program (SDP) is a critical government program that provides $160 million annually to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) exclusively for T1D research. The SDP complements Breakthrough T1D’s research funding and efforts.
To date, the SDP has dedicated nearly $2.8 billion to research. It has delivered real breakthroughs to this community, including artificial pancreas systems, the first therapy to delay T1D onset, and more.
Renewing the SDP is Breakthrough T1D’s #1 advocacy priority.
Insulin access and innovation
All people with T1D should have affordable access to insulin, which they need to take multiple times a day to survive. No one should suffer or die because they cannot afford insulin.
Breakthrough T1D is committed to working with everyone to achieve insulin affordability without stifling innovation.
Government funding
Breakthrough T1D champions federal funding from governments all over the world.
In the U.S., this means advocating for the highest possible funding levels for the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These government agencies are key partners to Breakthrough T1D advancing treatments and improving access to care for those all over the world who need it.
Accelerating access to cures
Thanks to decades of work by Breakthrough T1D, there is an FDA approved therapy that delays T1D onset. This revolutionary therapy is the first, but it will not be the last, to alter the course of T1D. This therapy, and future cure therapies, must be available to those who need and can benefit from them.
Breakthrough T1D is committed to working with all stakeholders to achieve affordable access to these therapies while ensuring innovations continue.
Breakthrough T1D advocates on behalf of the entire T1D community. With the help of our incredible grassroots advocates, we make sure key government agencies and Members of Congress know who we are, what we’re advocating for, and how they can help make T1D a thing of the past.”
Sign up
This work is powered by Breakthrough T1D advocates. Join us and help lead the way to life-changing improvements today and toward cures for T1D.
