Adam Duvall has overcome plenty of adversity in his career.
The Red Sox outfielder was an 11th-round draft pick who grinded for six years before establishing himself as a big league regular. He’s been traded, non-tendered and in recent years has worked his way back from a pair of major wrist injuries.
Yet none of that compares to the daily battle he’s been fighting for more than 11 years, and which he’ll continue to fight for the rest of his life.
Duvall was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2012, and at the time he was entering his third season of professional baseball as a 23-year-old in the San Francisco Giants organization. Duvall said in retrospect there had been signs and symptoms much earlier, but receiving the news was life-changing and added a completely new dimension to his transition to High-A ball.
“I had to learn on the fly. I got diagnosed during spring training so I had to learn how to manage it during the season,” Duvall said. “That was a lot at first but I had a lot of people around me, I had trainers, I had people that were educating me based on how to count carbs and manage during a game, those types of things.”
Duvall would eventually reach the majors and is now in his 10th big league season, but at the time of his diagnosis he was still two years away from his MLB debut. During that stretch Duvall was making a pittance of the salary he earns today, forcing him to confront one of the biggest challenges people with diabetes have to face — the affordability of insulin.
“Obviously insurance changes once you get up here but down there I had to pay for it and then get reimbursed by the insurance. I had parents that would help me out if I needed it, but it was expensive,” Duvall said. “I don’t remember exactly how expensive but it was expensive for a person making whatever we were in the minor leagues to have to come out of pocket and then be reimbursed like two to three weeks later. It was tough.”
Lowering the cost of insulin has become a top health care priority nationally, and recently there have been a number of efforts to make insulin more affordable. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act capped the monthly price of insulin at $35 for seniors on Medicare, and there is bipartisan legislation being considered by the U.S. Senate that would cap the price at $35 for all.
Eli Lilly, the nation’s largest insulin manufacturer, has also reduced the cost of its insulin to $35, and Duvall said he is partnering with the company and the American Diabetes Association to help spread the word as part of their “Tap the Cap” initiative.
“For me it’s important that people are, one, aware of it, and two, that they have access to that insulin,” Duvall said. “It’s such an important part of managing diabetes.”
Even for a professional athlete with access to all the resources in the world, living with diabetes can be difficult. Duvall has to constantly manage his blood sugar level, taking care to watch what he eats to ensure he stays within an acceptable range during games.
That’s often easier said than done, especially on days like Sunday, when the Red Sox played a doubleheader and then immediately hit the road late at night to Minnesota.
“The biggest thing is the types of carbs that I eat, I try to eat multi-grain carbs before a game that way they last throughout the game, and then during the game if I’m going low I try to do a Gatorade and a protein bar, something that will be a little longer lasting to get me through the game,” Duvall said, adding that white rice in particular is a big no-no for him.
“Those are the little nuances,” he continued. “It’s not going to be perfect, you’re going to go low, you’re going to have your highs, but trying to manage those, and I have a pump that I go with so that’s been huge for it.”
Duvall hopes he can use his platform as a big leaguer to spread awareness of diabetes and the resources available for those affected by it. Even people who don’t have a personal connection to the disease can help, he said, by sharing information about insulin affordability programs on social media. You never know who might see it.
“The biggest thing is to spread the news,” Duvall said, urging people to use the hashtag #TaptheCap. “The more people that know about it the better.”
For more information about Tap the Cap, visit lilly.com/insulin, and for more information about the ADA’s insulin affordability programs, visit diabetes.org/insulincost.
