James Elliott is convinced that the statistics describing the prevalence of type 1 diabetes are misleading,” Fran Quigley writes in Foreign Affairs. “’People say that there is little or no type 1 diabetes in poor countries,’ he says. ‘But that is because all of the people who had it are dead.’ Elliott, a health researcher working with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières and other organizations, has type 1 diabetes himself. As a volunteer advocate with the diabetes patient organization T1International, he and his colleagues confront the often-fatal problems caused by the price of insulin and other diabetes supplies. Elliott’s work recently took him to Cameroon, where a physician shared the story of a young patient’s father happily delivering news. “Did you hear?” the father said with a smile. “’sabelle died!; He was referring to his diabetic daughter (the name here is a pseudonym). The family had struggled to pay for her insulin and equipment, such as syringes and blood sugar test strips. Uneven access to the medicine had often left the young girl quite ill, and its cost when it was purchased had plunged the family into financial distress. ‘Now we are all able to eat enough,’ the father said. ‘And the other children can get an education.’ Mbolonzi Mbaluka understands. A Kenyan living with type 1 diabetes, he has had to skip insulin injections, sometimes because he could not afford the cost and sometimes because local hospitals ran out of stock. A fellow Kenyan patient recently died after going two months without insulin, which in many countries can cost up to 50 percent or more of the average income. For example, in Brazil, insulin and supplies can cost over 80 percent of an average income. “The insulin and the equipment together are just not affordable for many,” Mbaluka says.” Fran Quigley, “Making Insulin Affordable,” Foreign Affairs<.
Jeanne Pinder is the founder and CEO of ClearHealthCosts. She worked at The New York Times for almost 25 years as a reporter, editor and human resources executive, then volunteered for a buyout and founded ClearHealthCosts.
With Pinder at the helm, ClearHealthCosts shared honors for the top network public service journalism project in a partnership with CBS News, as well as winning numerous other journalism prizes.
She was previously a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia University School of Journalism. ClearHealthCosts has won grants from the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York; the International Women’s Media Foundation; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with KQED public radio in San Francisco and KPCC in Los Angeles; the Lenfest Foundation in Philadelphia for a partnership with The Philadelphia Inquirer; and the New York State Health Foundation for a partnership with WNYC public radio/Gothamist in New York; and other honors.
She is one of Crain’s Notable Women in Tech. Niemanlab wrote of ClearHealthCosts that “The Internet hates secrets.”
Her TED talk about fixing health costs has surpassed 2 million views.