Where This Came From
Beta Cell Foundation started with a simple observation: the knowledge that makes the biggest difference in day-to-day T1D management isn't in textbooks or clinical guidelines. It's in running groups, at diabetes camps, on trails, in online communities. It's the knowledge that flows between people who are managing this disease together in real life.
The question was how to take that knowledge — earned through years of trial and error, shared in fragments across a thousand conversations — and make it more structured, more accessible, and more powerful. How do you turn lived experience into education that actually teaches skills?
That's what BCF set out to build. Starting with Type One Run, a running community that became a proving ground for peer learning, and growing into a nonprofit that now develops full education programs, hosts structured community events, and builds interactive tools that help T1Ds understand their own physiology.
The education principles we apply aren't new. Scaffolded learning, active tools, reflection and goal-setting — these techniques have transformed learning in other fields. What's new is applying them to diabetes education, in a way that puts the learner — their specific body, their specific life — at the center.
Every program BCF creates starts with the same two questions: what skill does a person with T1D need, and what's the most effective way to teach it?
How We Think About Education
- Skill requires more than information — it requires the right sequence, active practice, tools for the moment, and a way to reflect and refine. BCF designs every program around these principles.
- Community is one of the most powerful educational contexts there is — when T1Ds learn together, in a running group, on a trail, or in an online community, knowledge flows in both directions. BCF builds programs that harness that.
- Education should adapt to the learner, not the other way around — every body is different. Every life is different. Our programs give you frameworks to understand your own — not protocols designed for someone else.
- Access isn't optional — every program in print and online. T1D doesn't care about your income, location, or circumstances — and neither does BCF.
- Resilience is a learnable skill too — the confidence to manage a lifelong chronic disease, and the community to lean on when it gets harder, are built through the right experiences. BCF programs are designed to build both.
Who BCF Serves
Organization
Beta Cell Foundation is built and run by people with type 1 diabetes. Every person who works on BCF does so because they believe in what it's building. Our programs are free and always will be.
Get in Touch
Questions, partnership inquiries, press, or just want to connect — reach us by email.