Ending Diabetes Stigma: From the Cockpit to the Workplace

Stigma follows people with diabetes into places that have little to do with their health: the job interview, the licensing office, the conversation with a colleague. This quarter brought progress in rules, in courts and in public conversation. 

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration published a proposed rule on 4 September 2026 that would allow aviation medical examiners to certify pilots whose diabetes is managed without insulin directly, rather than through the special issuance process. The current standard dates from 1959. The FAA reviewed 51 fatal accidents between 2008 and 2025 involving pilots taking non-insulin diabetes medicines and found diabetes an unlikely factor in 50 of them. About 3,000 applicants a year would benefit. Pilots treated with insulin would still require special issuance. The comment period closed on 5 October. 

In the United Kingdom, the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled in June 2026 in Cunningham v BBC, a case brought by a presentation director with type 2 diabetes and related fatigue who was disciplined after an on air error during a late shift. Occupational health had advised against early and late shifts. The Tribunal held that the employment tribunal was wrong to find that the BBC could not reasonably have known she was disabled, and sent her reasonable adjustments claim back for a fresh hearing. Employment lawyers have since highlighted the lesson for employers:
what matters is what they ought reasonably to have known. 

Public conversation is shifting too. Diabetes Australia's National Diabetes Week campaign, Living Out Loud, invited people to complete the sentence "I wish people knew…"  and collected more than 600 responses, reaching an estimated four million Australians. At the IDF Western Pacific Congress in Melbourne, Professor Jane Speight and Dr Elizabeth Holmes-Truscott led a Spotlight on Stigma session reflecting on 15 years of the Language Matters movement. In Canada, CTV News reported on 6 September that 30 per cent of Canadians believe type 2 diabetes is caused purely by individual choices, telling the story of Everton McLean, the fourth generation of his family to live with the condition.

As Rt. Hon. The Baroness May of Maidenhead noted in our previous edition, protections must be designed with care. The FAA proposal shows what evidence-based reform looks like: replacing blanket assumptions with individual assessment.

○ ADVOCACY ACTION FOR PARLIAMENTARIANS
Parliamentarians should ask their governments to review licensing, employment and insurance rules that still exclude people with diabetes by default, and to replace blanket restrictions with individual assessment based on current evidence. They can press for stronger enforcement of disability protections at work, and lend their voice to public campaigns that challenge the belief that diabetes is simply a matter of personal choice.