About Us

Anne is an independent Diabetes Specialist Nurse, director of DIME square Ltd and Founder of PITstop and PrePITstop. She has a BSc in Professional Practice and is a non-medical prescriber.

She has extensive experience in both primary and secondary care, and a particular interest in Type 2 diabetes and the training needs of practice diabetes teams. She advises clinical commissioning groups and training providers who are developing structured primary care training programmes for healthcare professionals. She has designed and delivered courses to meet the needs of practice teams, community pharmacisits, community nurses and care homes wanting to provide a high standard of diabetes care and support to their patients.

Bibliography Author of Programme for Insulin Therapy for people with type 2 diabetes Co-author of Dietary considerations with insulin and type 2 diabetes.

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Lauren is from a design and marketing background. Since 2015 -2019 she worked for a design and communication agency with a focus in Financial services. In 2019 Lauren set up her Brand Consultancy company and also became part of the PITstop team. Her role was to assist Anne with design and marketing, management of the website and administration. Since working with the PITstop team, Lauren has helped transform the course folders to workbooks, updated the website and changed the evaluation structure and presentation. Since May 2023 Lauren has become a Co-Director at PITstop and manages the operations side of the company, including course organisation, account management and new business.

Sarah has been involved in diabetes in primary care for over twenty years. Firstly, gaining experience as a practice nurse involved
in supporting GP diabetes clinics. Sarah joined Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT)in 2001 as a diabetes 
specialist nurse and completed her MSc in Diabetes in 2009.

Her areas of interest are patient education and empowerment. Until
recently, Sarah was the lead nurse for developing and delivering the patient education programmes for people with type 1 and type
2 diabetes in east Kent. PITstop trainer since 2014.

Karen Ellard is a National PITstop trainer with over 15 years experience as a Community Diabetes Specialist Nurse. She has been a trainer on the PITstop programme in Bexley, Kent from the beginning in 2011 and played an integral part in the original course design. She continues to support Practice teams in Bexley where most practice teams are trained to an advanced level.

Former NHS Diabetes Specialist Nurse, currently employed by a medical device company.

Following an interest in diabetes as a Practice Nurse, Sarah became a Diabetes Nurse in 2003 and in the last 20 years has worked across the private sector as well as primary and secondary care. She led a Community Diabetes Service both operationally and clinically across Staffordshire for over 10 years. During this time Sarah held national roles, including an Executive Board Member for the NHS Diabetes Programme and a committee member on the RCN Diabetes Forum. Clinically she led healthcare professional education and the transition of an insulin pump service to a community provider. This developed her special interest in Type 1 Diabetes and the increasing use of Technology.

This interest has taken Sarah to her current role as an implementation Specialist working within a medical device company. This role is instrumental in supporting the NHS to implement the recently updated NICE Guidelines for diabetes.

Sarah qualified as an RGN (Adult DipHE) in 1997, attained a BSc (Hons) in Nursing Studies in 2005, Independent nurse prescribing qualification in 2009 and completed her MSc in Health Science with a diabetes focus in 2019.

After igniting a passion for diabetes whilst working in prisons, Paige became a practice nurse in 2020 and then went on to become a diabetes specialist nurse and most recently the lead diabetes specialist nurse for the community diabetes team within Milton Keynes.

Paige has a special interest in the diabetes care provided within prison/custody settings and young onset type 2 diabetes and is committed to providing compassionate diabetes care to this cohort.

Paige is currently finishing her MSc in Contemporary nursing which is naturally diabetes focused.

I am the chief executive of a charity specialising in research, training and empowering structured education in the prevention and management of conditions such as diabetes and obesity. I obtained a degree in nutrition and dietetics in 1993, a post graduate teaching qualification (PGCE) in 1998 and a doctorate in diabetes in 2004.

As founder of X-PERT Health and author of the X-PERT Programmes, I have trained more than 1,500 healthcare professionals to become educators, which has permitted the delivery of structured education to more than 500,000 people with prediabetes or diabetes. The clinical trial published in 2006 demonstrated that the X-PERT Diabetes Programme significantly improves both health and quality of life along with a reduced requirement for medication. We perform annual audits and benchmark the results to the outcomes from the clinical trial to ensure that health improvement is still being achieved, our latest audit paper was published in Practical Diabetes in December 2021.

In 2017 we re-launched the X-PERT Insulin programme under the strapline of “reduce or omit”, which recognises that lifestyle changes can reduce requirement for insulin in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. In January 2018 we launched the X-PERT Weight programme that provides people with the tools they need to achieve sustainable weight loss. In April 2020, we launched the diabetes digital programme that we have now translated into 14 additional languages. In 2021, we have worked in collaboration with The Public Health Collaboration to develop The Lifestyle Club (TLC) Programme and are proud that many more people will receive up-to-date and evidence based information to help them become metabolically healthier and work towards putting their prediabetes/Type 2 diabetes into remission.

As a member of the following Scientific Advisory Boards: Public Health Collaboration (PHC); Collaboration For Kids (CFK); All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Diabetes, I look forward to the continued opportunity to further develop professional and patient education systems based on discovery learning and bespoke digital boards that enable people to develop the knowledge, understanding and confidence to manage (and even reverse) their long term condition, improving health and well-being, and NHS costs.