Sarah Ali

Dr Ali read medicine at the University of Oxford, UK and undertook her specialist training in diabetes in North West London and Imperial College London. At Imperial College, she spent a year as a Clinical Research Fellow investigating eating behaviours and brain reward systems. She is now a Consultant Diabetologist at Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, where she is the Clinical Leads for both the Royal Free Diabetes Antenatal service and the Barnet Community Diabetes service.

Dr Ali’s specialist interests include integrated community diabetes care, diabetes in pregnancy, health inequalities in minority ethnic communities (diabetes and COVID-19), and diabetes in Ramadan, with publications in all of these fields.

Dr Ali strives to improve outcomes for people living with Diabetes; she is on the committee for the NICE Diabetes guidelines and has also undertaken a number of national diabetes projects, including co-authoring a national guideline on the best delivery of Diabetes in the PCNs on behalf of NHS England. Being a Trustee for the South Asian Health Foundation (SAHF) furthermore has allowed Sarah to help address health inequalities. She is due to become a Trustee for Diabetes UK in May 2022.

A passion for both science and the humanities keeps her balanced and harmonious. She is trilingual and a visual artist and colourist. Sarah creates contemporary/abstract medical art and working on a number of art projects to raise health awareness, including in diabetes. Dr Ali has exhibited art, sold paintings, created the artwork for a music cover album and has had a painting featured in Nature Medicine. She has recently created the artwork for a poetry collection about living with type 1 diabetes, which Sarah and her poet friend have published as a book Bittersweet. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).