Center for Diabetes Translation Research Receives $3.7 Million Grant

The Center for Diabetes Translation Research (CDTR), a nexus for transdisciplinary team science and transformative research, has been awarded more than $3.7 million by the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, a National Institutes of Health institute.

The mission of CDTR, founded in 2011 and directed by the Brown School’s Joyce Wood Professor Debra Haire-Joshu, is to eliminate disparities in diabetes by translating, disseminating, implementing and sustaining evidence-based research findings into real-world settings. This grant will continue the Center’s important work for the next five years.

“We work with over 80 investigators across the country to help them develop and implement diabetes and obesity prevention and control studies,” Haire-Joshu said. “The grant money is designed to provide core services through dissemination and implementation, policy, health communication and working with diverse African-American and American Indian populations. So we do not focus on one study — we assist a network of investigators in conducting hundreds of applied studies and publishing that work to the academic community and public at large.”

The Center itself is home to a group of investigators conducting research focused around two interacting scientific themes: the root causes of diabetes disparities and the prevention of obesity as a major contributing cause of Type 2 diabetes.

The grant is a collaboration of the Brown School and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in partnership with the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network, the National Congress of American Indians and the University of Missouri at Columbia.