Experts Discuss How to Make Chronic Care Fit Into Patients’ Lives

When Garrett Vogel was 11, his parents thought he had the flu. They gave him Gatorade—lots of it—not realizing he was actually experiencing symptoms of Type 1 diabetes. By the time he reached the hospital, his blood sugar was well over 1,000.“The doctor looked at me like, ‘How are you still walking?’” Vogel said Thursday at the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York.Vogel, an on-air host for Elvis Duran and the Morning Show and a Type 1 diabetes advocate, recalled this moment in a conversation with psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Judith Joseph and Ashley McEvoy, president and CEO of Insulet, which sponsored the event, about how chronic care could better accommodate patients’ daily lives. For Vogel, that starts with recognizing how much emotional work follows a diagnosis. As a kid, he didn’t immediately understand that diabetes wasn’t something that would disappear the next day. His endocrinologist gave him the medical facts, he said, but his parents were left to do much of the emotional “heavy lifting.”More than three decades later, Vogel said he’s still learning how to live with the condition. Technology has made managing it easier—but so has becoming more comfortable asking ...