The world has diabetes, but nobody’s talking about it. It’s time to reignite the international dialogue. We realized there were enough people with type 2 diabetes—343,000,000—to form the world’s third-largest country. So that’s what we did. We created that country: The State of Diabetes. Through a multinational, multimedia campaign and coordinated outdoor efforts in New York, San Francisco, Boston, London, and Paris, we challenged the world to recognize The State of Diabetes. All of our creative assets drove to a petition for sovereignty at thestateofdiabetes.org, which received signatures from 55 countries on all 7 continents. By uniting more than a dozen advocacy groups, we gained the international attention we demanded. Consider the conversation started.

It’s time to reignite international conversation about type 2 diabetes. We needed to provide a platform for organizations and advocates to rally behind, along with easily distributable creative resources. It was key that these resources be able to bridge across countries and continents while still sparking meaningful conversations that could unite the ever-growing diabetes community. Our primary target audience was diabetes advocates and organizations from around the world, with a secondary target of international government representatives.

We used one simple idea to get people talking: the population of people with type 2 diabetes worldwide could form the third-largest country. By facilitating the conversation and rallying diabetes advocates around it, we made The State of Diabetes a pervasive agent in the fight for diabetes awareness. Armed with banners, wild postings, and fliers customized for more than 50 different countries, we took to the streets on World Diabetes Day. Our efforts targeted dozens of United Nations consulates and public spaces in cities around the world, including New York, San Francisco, Boston, London, and Paris. We bolstered support for these efforts via social media by tapping into the vast online diabetes community where we shared content, including our PSA video and country-specific messaging. Together with our coalition of advocacy groups, we have been raising awareness and continue to drive signatures for our petition at thestateofdiabetes.org.

Within a week of launch, 14 individual diabetes organizations on four continents joined our coalition, offering visible partnership and support. Our PSA video was featured on Upworthy.com and ultimately viewed in 128 countries. Meanwhile, thestateofdiabetes.org received visitors from 76 countries and petition signatures from 45 countries across all 7 continents (thanks, Antarctica). Most important, we gave the diabetes community something to talk about that lasted far beyond the 24-hour life span of World Diabetes Day. More than 5 months later the conversation continues, country by country, as we continue to attract the attention and support of even more diabetes advocacy groups around the world.

To unite the global diabetes community, we centered our efforts around a simple and striking idea: creating the new third-largest country, The State of Diabetes, and petitioning the United Nations for sovereignty. By setting our sights on the United Nations, we provided a unified rallying point for diabetes advocates around the world. Leveraging our website and the immediacy of Twitter, we quickly connected beyond national borders and fostered a sense of citizenship amongst the diabetes community. Through the diaTribe Foundation, we enlisted 14 diabetes organizations on four continents to add their visible support to our coalition and expand our street efforts across the globe. By providing them with messaging and creative assets, we equipped them to push for improved prevention and care at a local level.

The United Nations officially recognized World Diabetes Day in 2005, saying that this “chronic, debilitating, and costly disease poses severe risks for families, Member States, and the entire world.” Less than a decade later, the word diabetes is not mentioned once in the 600+ pages of the United Nations’ agenda. Efforts to change this were fractured and spread across thousands of advocacy groups, each with its own objectives.