How To Cope With Diabetes Stigma at Work
Key takeaways:
- Diabetes in the workplace often comes with interpersonal challenges, including insensitive comments and misunderstandings.
- Inclusive practices are often overlooked by colleagues and managers.
- There is a need for better education, awareness, and support systems to reduce health stigma and create more inclusive workplaces.
People with diabetes sometimes hear comments from coworkers that can feel hurtful or judgmental. Routine care, like taking insulin or checking glucose, sometimes feels conspicuous, and coworkers' lack of understanding may leave people feeling like they're being judged, treated differently, or seen as less capable.
Like others with diabetes, I've felt primarily acceptance and support from coworkers as I juggled type 1 along with my workload in half a dozen offices. Yet, I’ve had colleagues comment on how often I eat, mistaking a low-blood-sugar correction for snacking – while missing the flip side: the times I would delay lunch or sit out on a shared meal because I’m waiting on my blood sugar. Coworkers have also joked about soda or candy at my desk, which I find less conspicuous than glucose tablets.
In a small study of people with type 2 diabetes in the workplace, participants described the stigmatizing behavior they experienced as "unhelpful, annoying, or discouraging." One person in the study said diabetes had affected her advancement and contributed to her leaving the position.
At its worst, stigma can rise to the level of discrimination and harm to career opportunities for people with diabetes. So how might people with diabetes cope with stigma in their day-to-day life at work?
When diabetes care becomes office commentary
Coworkers often don't realize food, juice, candy, and soda may serve double duty as fast-acting sugar that's used to head off a workplace emergency in the form of sudden hypoglycemia. In addition, perceived criticism over food choices or jokes about “getting diabetes” from eating sugar can be upsetting and isolating.
“Remarks such as ‘Should you really be eating that?’ are rarely neutral,” said Bryan Cleal, a senior researcher at the Steno Diabetes Center in Copenhagen, who co-authored a study on diabetes stigma and discrimination in the workplace. "These comments draw on a broader narrative that positions diabetes as a matter of individual control."
Cleal said the problem is usually not a single comment, but a buildup of interactions that can leave people feeling judged.
"While any single comment might be dismissed, their repetition over time can produce a persistent sense of being evaluated, which is a key mechanism through which stigma operates in everyday work life,” he said.
People with diabetes are often doing invisible work
Managing diabetes is work, Cleal noted, and colleagues may not realize someone is responding to urgent highs or lows, dosing insulin, troubleshooting a device issue, or trying to prevent an alarm from going off. They may also be working through fatigue, interrupted sleep after overnight blood sugar events, or the mental load of staying ahead of all of it while keeping up with meetings and deadlines.
“What people often want is not special treatment, but recognition that diabetes management is legitimate work that sometimes needs to take priority in the moment,” Cleal said.
Chelcie Rice, who has type 1 diabetes, is a comedian and diabetes advocate in Pensacola, Florida. He also works as a customer service representative at a credit union, where he's experienced diabetes stigma.
Rice said coworkers may know someone with diabetes, but they often don’t understand the difference between type 1 and type 2, why medical leniency matters, or why insulin can make food choices more flexible in some situations while low- or no-carb options may matter in others.
"If you don't know a family member or a friend that has it, oftentimes you just don't have a clue," Rice said. "People don't want to ask a question. They would rather hold on to what they think they know."
Choosing how to respond – or not at all
Cleal pointed out that the burden of how to respond should not fall solely on people with diabetes. And yet individuals may still need tools for those moments.
He suggests a light correction – “I actually need that for low blood sugar” or “diabetes is a bit more complicated than that” – can help when the issue is a misunderstanding.
Siddharth Sharma, a product and strategy leader in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, who has type 1, made the point that people with diabetes may respond differently to stigmatizing comments. And even their own reactions can shift over time.
Sharma said he was more prone to take offense shortly after his diagnosis. But he recognizes that coworkers have no more idea of what he's living with than he does of their health situations.
Now he takes a moment to assess a coworker’s intention and what they were trying to communicate, rather than focusing only on the words they used, which can be imprecise in the moment. He sums up his approach simply: Respond, don't react.
“Taking a few seconds to realize what’s happening and think about how best to respond can save a lot of time and effort,” he said. “Think about being low and wanting to eat the entire fridge. Instead, you take a gummy or glucose tab and wait 10-15 minutes before checking your blood sugar. Otherwise, you end up high and overcorrect to chase the next low. It’s the same idea with workplace comments: We can’t control what others say, but we can control how we respond. Every comment could be a teaching opportunity.”
For recurring situations, a private conversation, HR support, formal accommodations, or documentation may be necessary. The larger fix, Cleal said, is workplace culture: Managers and colleagues need enough awareness to make routine diabetes care feel normal, not conspicuous.
"Ideally, workplaces would create environments where these everyday misunderstandings are less likely to arise in the first place," he said.
The bottom line
Diabetes stigma at work often shows up in small, ordinary moments: a comment about what someone is eating, a joke about sugar causing diabetes, or confusion about why someone keeps candy or soda nearby. Any one exchange may seem minor, but the repetition can leave people with diabetes feeling that they need to explain the everyday steps they take to stay safe.
People with diabetes may need flexibility, food, medication, devices, breaks, or medical leave, but they may also worry that asking for support will make them seem difficult, less reliable, or less capable of handling tough assignments. Instead of special treatment, they may simply want diabetes management to be recognized as legitimate work that sometimes has to come first.
Addressing these issues in the workplace should not fall on people with diabetes. Organizational leaders and managers should aim to create a culture that avoids stigmatizing situations for people with health needs, including diabetes.
Learn more about dealing with diabetes stigma here: