CANBERRA – When young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people sat down for honest yarns about type 2 diabetes, their communities trusted them with something rarely said out loud. Young people spoke of carrying questions they felt they couldn’t ask. Families spoke of doing their best without the full picture. And behind it all sat a quiet, heavy word, shame, so heavy that many wouldn’t name the condition at all, calling it only “that sickness.”
This National Diabetes Week (12 to 18 July), those same young people are answering back with a message written in their own words: no shame in diabetes, no shame in checking, and a free health check is where taking charge begins.
The message comes from seven young leaders on NACCHO’s Youth Diabetes Advisory Committee, formed under the NACCHO | Bupa Foundation Health Strong, Diabetes Gone partnership. Drawn from communities across the country, they took the hard questions about diabetes home to their own mob, young people and families alike, and carried what they heard to Melbourne last month, shaping it into the national campaign direction that launches this week. School students told them that people with diabetes get blamed for having it. Young people described the condition as inevitable, called it “sugar diabetes,” and reckoned they were too young for it to matter. The committee’s answer drives every asset launching this week: flip the shame, bust the myths, and make the health check normal.
One of those seven is Amberlee, a 21-year-old Gomeroi and Wiradjuri woman. who carried the committee’s questions back to her own community and heard the shame up close.
“We heard it straight from our own communities, young mob joking about diabetes because nobody ever had the yarns about what it really means. But diabetes can happen to anyone, and it doesn’t change who you are or how deadly you are. There’s no shame in diabetes, and getting checked doesn’t make you weak; it makes you strong, for you, your family, and your mob. That’s our message this week and every week after it: have the yarn, visit your local ACCHO, get checked, and look after your mob. Let’s tackle Type 2 diabetes together.”
Behind the committee’s message sits a shift in who this condition reaches, and how young, and, for NACCHO Senior Medical Advisor Dr Jason Agostino, a window that must not be missed.
“Type 2 diabetes is showing up in children and teenagers, at ages we simply did not use to see it. For many young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, that is why we recommend checking from as early as 10. It matters because diabetes rarely occurs in isolation: the earlier it begins, the longer complications like kidney and heart disease have to take hold across a lifetime. But the reverse is just as true. Find it early in a young person, act on it early, and you change the trajectory of an entire life, not just a diagnosis. A 715 health check is free, it looks at the whole person, and it tells a young person exactly where they stand. If we are serious about breaking the intergenerational cycle of diabetes, this generation is where it breaks.”
For NACCHO Chair Donnella Mills, the committee is community control showing its next generation.
“These young leaders did not wait for permission. They went out, asked their communities the hard questions, listened to the answers, and built the response themselves. They are not just the future of our health leadership; they are doing the job right now. And when a young person hears ‘no shame’ from someone who looks like them, sounds like them and lives where they live, that message lands in a way no government pamphlet ever will,” Ms Mills said.
From Monday, the campaign rolls out across the channels young people chose for themselves: committee members fronting videos on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and content built from what their communities actually told them.
Behind the campaign sits the NACCHO Diabetes Learning Hub (learn.naccho.org.au), the partnership’s free online education platform, designed by NACCHO to deliver culturally safe, evidence-based diabetes training. The Hub is where the campaign’s health information comes from, so that everything shared with young people and families rests on current, culturally safe evidence. Built for Aboriginal Health Workers and Practitioners and open to families and community, it is also where anyone can go to learn more. For young people, the campaign is the invitation; for the workforce and families who want to go further, the Hub is the next step; free, on demand and community-led.
NACCHO Chief Executive Officer Dr Dawn Casey PSM FAHA turns the question on the system.
“Why are young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people developing a preventable condition at ages their grandparents never saw, some of them still children? Not because communities are failing, but because the system has always reached them too late. ACCHOs are already turning that around: culturally safe care, close to home, with the 715 health check as the front door. And with point-of-care testing, a young person can be screened, get their results and start yarning about prevention or treatment in a single visit, no waiting weeks, no travelling for a second appointment, no barriers that let a diagnosis slip through the cracks. Australia signed up to increase access to primary healthcare under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. Backing young people to bring their mob through the clinic door is precisely the community-led model governments committed to building, and it is the one that works,” Dr Casey said.
Bupa Asia Pacific Director of Social Impact and Sustainability, Bronwyn Portes, who watched the committee at work in Melbourne, saw a partnership doing exactly what it was built to do.
“What struck us in Melbourne was a group of young people who were not waiting to be consulted; they were leading. They designed the questions, they listened to their communities, and they are fronting the response themselves. The Bupa Foundation’s role in Health Strong, Diabetes Gone has always been to back the knowledge, capability and leadership that already exist in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and this committee is exactly that. When young people own the message, our job is to stand behind them, and we do.”
Community members can ask about a free 715 health check at their local ACCHO. Health workers, families and community can access the NACCHO Diabetes Learning Hub at learn.naccho.org.au.
