Dr Val Wilson is an academic with a PhD in diabetes health education from the University of Kent, UK. As a specialist in the field, she has conducted various research studies about how people self-manage their diabetes over the past 25 years. She has also done more than ten years of voluntary work with the INPUT (Insulin Pump Therapy) national diabetes organisation. Dr Wilson has published widely in nursing and healthcare journals and has had Type 1 diabetes for 45 years.