Table 3 Rationale for being a Peer Ambassador

To educate oneself in order to help others

“So, you know, so telling them it’s an experience where you also get to learn stuff, and you also get to tell other people about it. And you’re going to learn a lot of stuff from your peer buddies too. You learn some things from them that you probably didn’t know, or maybe you heard about it, but you forgot about it.” – PA8

“I was a peer ambassador last time, and diabetes is prevalent in my family, and so I wanted to be, wanted to increase my knowledge and speak with others to see what they might be doing and how it might help my family as well as help the community at large.” – PA6

To contribute to decreasing diabetes-related stigma

“If you look at the African American community, you look at a very secretive world. We’re very secret about things, which means we was told not to talk about it. So now we have to try to get these people to actually come in and open up and talk to us about it, you know. And that’s, in itself, you have to be able to do that in order to be a peer ambassador. It’s work that is included in that, you know, and you have to work at being able to, be able to open up with especially older people, to be able to open up to your... African community, totally different. You don’t know who walking around here with diabetes because it’s a hush-hush thing. We don’t talk about it. We don’t...” – PA8

“I saw a need in our community. People that, of color, primarily black, who are having difficulty opening up, asking questions.” – PA7

Provides the opportunity to receive support for one’s diabetes experience

This is really the first time I’ve actually talked with other people, other than the doctor, about the diabetes. Sometimes people can just deal with it by themselves, and as everybody here knows, there are times you feel encouraged and times you feel discouraged, because the numbers don’t look right, or, and it’s a marathon. It’s like a long-distance race, and it helps to be able to talk to somebody, yeah.” – PA4

“I’m a nurse and because I’m a diabetic myself, I felt that I could use the support myself also.” – PA1