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Kate Gajewska

Kate Gajewska

Dr Kate Gajewska, Advocacy and Research Manager at Diabetes Ireland, clinical researcher and psychologist living with type 1 diabetes.

Jun 5, 2026

speaker_0HOST
0:42
You were diagnosed very young.
0:44
Yes, I was diagnosed as a 16-month-old child, which was a long time ago, 1987.
0:51
Times were very different and the development of technology, research, treatments was very, very different.
0:58
So when I was diagnosed, my parents were actually told that I'll definitely develop all diabetes-related complications.
1:04
By the age of 20, I'll probably be blind.
1:07
I won't have food.
1:10
However, everything has changed.
speaker_0HOST
4:16
Ideally, for someone like you who is born and is diagnosed with diabetes early in their life, what difference would you like a plan like this to make to their lives?
John Pemberton
John PembertonCORRESPONDENT
19:44
Mm-hmm.
19:45
So one of the, one of the priorities of the strategy, uh, was to highlight the need to develop the psychology teams.
19:52
The strategy also highlights supports for organizations such as Diabetes Ireland, uh, to work on supporting people with diabetes and within Diabetes Ireland have programs to support them, mental health and wellbeing programs.
20:06
We have, uh, dreams, type 1 dreams for people with adults with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes.
20:12
We have COPE for people with type 2 diabetes.
20:15
We have care for parents of children with diabetes.
20:18
So it's all has been recognized, and even from the point of view of the conference itself and agenda was full of psychology-related topics.
John Pemberton
John PembertonCORRESPONDENT
20:49
What's the sort of plan, and what's the outlook for that?

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