Mission:
The mission of the Center is to transform the health of people with, or at risk for type 1, type 2, or gestational diabetes or related conditions in North Carolina and beyond its borders by advancing translational sciences that result in primary and secondary prevention of diabetes and its complications.
Vision:
The vision of the Center is to be nationally recognized for supporting diabetes translational researchers that hastens the adoption of evidence-based scientific advances in underserved communities and under-represented populations that reduce diabetes-related health disparities.
The Center for Diabetes Translation Research to Reduce Health Disparities will serve as a hub for helping researchers, to identify, refine, and implement best practices for translating efficacy trials into practice both in North Carolina and nationally. Our Center will build on and complement existing resources at UNC that are needed to effectively support translational research.
Scientific Background:
With this CDTR, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) and its partners will transform the health care of our citizens and our most vulnerable communities at risk for diabetes and its complications by a continuous cycle of knowledge and dissemination or implementation leading to new knowledge and more type II translation. In doing so, UNC-CH and its partners will be transformed by connections with community needs and concerns across our State, and translating those needs into hypotheses that bridge the gap between science and community practice resulting in continuous improving health care and decreasing diabetes-related health disparities.
The thematic areas of the Center bring together critically important and unique resources that will support diabetes and obesity translational research to change the health of vulnerable populations in North Carolina in which diabetes risk and diabetes co-morbidities are more prevalent. The central themes of the UNC Center are represented by three distinct cores that are unique to the consortium, 1) the Literacy and Numeracy core representing a national resource, 2) the Community Connections Core, and 3) the Access with Technology Core. These three cores are integrated to provide key elements of diabetes translational research support that foster research, which aims to address significant gaps in translating scientific advances in community and clinical practice in vulnerable populations.