Opinion: Diabetes association CEO: What an independent review says happened at the ADA’s controversial June conference

Sept. 1, 2026 Henderson is the CEO of the American Diabetes Association. On June 5, at the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, several attendees were removed after repeated disruptions. I apologized soon after — to the individuals directly involved and to the broader diabetes community — for the distress that day caused, and I meant it. I also promised a full accounting by independent reviewers of what happened. That review, conducted by five independent volunteer investigators, is now complete. I believe its findings deserve to be heard directly, rather than filtered through three months of competing narratives. Two claims have driven much of the public anger, and the review examined both directly. The first is that ADA suppressed a viewpoint — that attendees were removed for distributing an editorial critical of federal research cuts. The review found no merit to that claim. That editorial was published in our own journal, Diabetes Care. We were not censoring content we ourselves had put into print. What led to people being asked to leave was conduct during the session — repeated disruptions, continuing after multiple requests to stop — that runs counter to our conference code of conduct, not the substance of what anyone was handing out. The second claim is that ADA called in police to intervene against our own members. The review found that did not happen. Security personnel were on-site, as at any conference of our size, and some of them were off-duty police officers, acting in their capacity as event security, not as law enforcement. The review found no evidence that a call was placed to the New Orleans Police Department by anyone from the ADA. I share these findings not to declare what happened June 5 a nonissue, or to suggest ADA staff and security got everything right. Let me be clear: We didn’t. The review makes clear there were missed opportunities for better communication — from our staff and from security — in the moments before and during the disruption, and we take that seriously. But I do think it matters that established facts, once they exist, replace assumptions — including ones I did not correct quickly enough myself. The ADA’s long-held commitment to open debate isn’t just words. Diabetes Care has published critical viewpoints of federal research policy — including the very editorial at the center of this controversy. The ADA has also made numerous public statements calling out the current and former administrations for cutting diabetes prevention programs, reducing research support, and decreasing health care coverage. We intend to keep making those comments when federal actions undercut the diabetes community. We will also keep making room for others’ points of dissent, in our journals and in other fora. A scientific community that only tolerates agreement isn’t a healthy one. What we ask is that disagreement be expressed in ways that don’t come at the expense of everyone else’s ability to participate in the same room. There’s another lesson from these events that I think matters more, and it’s one about us, not about that day. This is a period of deep anxiety across the medical research community about the future of federal funding, and that anxiety is not misplaced — significant cuts to diabetes research funding have been proposed in recent budget cycles. What often goes untold is that most proposed cuts to diabetes research have thus far not materialized. Diabetes research funding has been kept largely whole against those proposals, because our community fought for it — including ADA’s role this year in the ongoing pushback against a White House Office of Management and Budget proposal that would have let political appointees, rather than career grantmaking processes, decide which research got funded. That advocacy has had impact: The Senate recently added language to the pending continuing resolution that would block the OMB rule from taking effect, and we are pressing to get the same language into House legislation. This is the kind of work ADA does every day on behalf of this field, often without notice. But we have not always told that story well to the people most affected by it: the researchers and clinicians who show up to our meetings wondering whether anyone with influence is in their corner. That gap is at least part of why frustration that belonged elsewhere landed on us in New Orleans. We intend to close it. Here is what I know independent of any review: This is not a moment our community can afford to spend fighting itself. Every hour spent contesting the story of one difficult day is one not spent on the fight that will determine what the next decade of diabetes research looks like. That fight has one opponent: policy that harms the health and research interests of the diabetes community. I am not pretending that June 5 didn’t happen, and I will hold our organization accountable for where we came up short. Accountability, including the kind this review represents, is part of how trust gets rebuilt. What I ask is that we hold two things at once: a clear-eyed accounting of what occurred, and a shared recognition that researchers, clinicians, and advocates in our community remain each other’s strongest allies against a far larger threat to work we’ve all given our careers to. We have weathered funding fights and internal disagreements before, and come through them by choosing, eventually, to face outward together. I know we can do that again. Charles “Chuck” Henderson is the CEO of the American Diabetes Association.