I completed the ADA’s Diabetes Is Primary® 2026 specialization.

This one wasn’t particularly easy for me, and I didn’t expect it to be. I’m a data analyst, not a clinician, and much of the material sits well outside my professional area of expertise.

That’s also why I wanted to take it.

A significant part of my analytics and data visualization work involves diabetes. Learning more about screening, treatment, complications, diabetes technology, self-management, and person-centered care gives me a better understanding of the people represented by this data, the people who use it, and the decisions it's intended to support.

I don’t come away from a course like this believing I have clinical expertise. I come away with better context.

And I’ve increasingly come to believe that context matters in analytics. Knowing how to calculate, analyze, or visualize something is only part of the job. Understanding what the data represents, how it fits into a larger process, and why it matters can lead to better questions and more useful analysis.

It would be easy to look at clinical material and say, “That isn’t my field.” Technically, it isn’t. But it is part of the world surrounding the data I work with, and understanding more of that world makes the data more meaningful.

Sometimes that means learning something well outside your own discipline.

#Diabetes #DataAnalytics #DataVisualization #HealthcareAnalytics #ProfessionalDevelopment