It Starts with Seeing: March 16 was the 2024 #insulin4all Global Day of Action

On Saturday I was in Washington, D.C. to join T1International’s Global Day of Action for #insulin4all. Participants in Paris, Indianapolis, Islamabad, and other locations advocated for the cost of insulin and glucose testing supplies to represent no more than 5% of a person’s income in any given country.

Fresh from hearing patient stories on the Mall I visited the exhibit Dorothea Lange: Seeing People at the National Gallery of Art. Alongside other portraits “Street Demonstration, San Francisco, 1934” certainly resonated. Access to jobs and medicines hinges on access to the eyes and ears of decision-makers. Moving through the space, I read the following statement of Lange’s: "Five years earlier I would have thought it enough to take a picture of a man, no more. But now, I wanted to take a picture of a man as he stood in his world."

His world. His circumstances. His reality. This kind of seeing is the origin of public health.