**Please note we no longer offer services and the blog is not active but you can access all of the many blog posts and articles here still. I have left this here so that you can still benefit from all of the year we worked in diabetes and mental health - Helen xx

Welcome to Your Diabetes Hub - an archive of many years of diabetes blog posts and stories. I am Helen Edwards, person with type 1 diabetes, writer and blogger. I am mama to 3 gorgeous boys, and lover of people and planet.

I have lived with type 1 diabetes since 1979 when I was 12 years old and worked in diabetes from 2001 - 2018, after I started a website called Diabetes Counselling Online - a world first, groundbreaking free online diabetes counselling service and community, supporting literally thousands and thousands of people all over the world living with diabetes. I ran this until 2016, when we closed our doors.

When I started way back in 2001, I felt that more needed to be done for the wellbeing and mental health of all people with diabetes. People with diabetes suffer up to twice the rates of depression compared to the rest of the population, reduced wellbeing and increased stress and anxiety. We can live wonderful lives, but support from health care professionals, loved ones and other people with diabetes is vital. At that time, online counselling was in its infancy in Australia and there was no Diabetes Online Community (DOC) social media at the time!

So I created my own, with email buddies and a forum and chat room. If you were around then, you may remember those days! Around that time, the world was just starting to realise that diabetes was more than just blood glucose. There started to be small movements towards looking at the person behind the disease, which has gladly grown over time.

I was a groundbreaker in this area, and won many grants and awards for my work in diabetes over the following decade, including the Australasian DAWN Award (Diabetes Attitudes, Wishes and Needs).

I was able to grow the organisation and we did some amazing work across many years, thanks to our wonderful counsellors and volunteers.

I was awarded a state finalist spot in the Australian of the year awards in 2016 for this work, and a state finalist spot in the Telstra Business Woman of the Year awards, in the social good category.

I am a PhD Candidate studying diabetes and pregnancy wellbeing and my first part of this study was published here. I am continuing this research at the moment, looking at how we can improve Preparedness for pregnancy through better communication between health care professionals and women with diabetes, and access to support and information.

In 2012 I won a government grant that allowed us to grow our diabetes counselling services and help thousands of people. We also created some brilliant resources, including my children's picture book - Diabetes Can't Stop Me

However life changes, and after 15 years and some amazing years helping so many people, it was time for us to close Diabetes Counselling Online in mid 2016. In 2018 I decided to leave diabetes work altogether to concentrate on my sustainability work here and my writing of books here. 

Here is a little bit of press around my work.

Diabetes Australia

Uni SA

Diabetes Educator

The Standard

Straight to the Point

Australian of the Year

News.com.au

ABC

Diabetic Living

 Head to the blog here for lots of tips, stories and information and wishing you lots of good days with diabetes.

Helen  xx