The Ecological Approach to Self-Management in Diabetes

Whether our lives are directed by events around us or events within us, “not in our stars, but in ourselves,” is of concern in ethics, aesthetics, law, religion (the Old Testament of laws and the New Testament of “faith as a mustard seed” within us), and, of course, behavioral science, biology, and health. The present paper emphasizes the importance of contexts – ecological, social, organizational, community, policy – in health and health behavior; describes peer or social, community, and policy approaches to addressing contexts; and considers all of these with reference to the challenges of diabetes prevention and management.