People living with diabetes (along with obesity and other metabolic disorders) often face many physical and psychosocial burdens. Because of the prevalence of the disease, affecting more than 37 million people in the United States alone, there are pressing needs to identify new therapeutic strategies to improve and implement life saving therapies and prevention strategies, ensuring everyone access to these advances.

One of the ways to lead in advancing health is in the connection between the academic, research and clinical missions – ultimately aiming to develop leaders that will make positive impacts around the world.

One example is The Caswell Diabetes Institute. The institute provides the infrastructure to enhance diabetes-related clinical care (Type 1 and  Type 2), while supporting a broad portfolio of research and researches from basic science to clinical and translational research and policy initiatives.

This focus helps ensure transformative diabetes care integrates with clinical research and supplies coordinating informatics infrastructure to support the clinical care and research missions while also fostering robust training and mentorship of learners, faculty, and staff dedicated to the treatment of and research in diabetes and related disorders.

It is important that the translation of new research findings is integrated into clinical practice, and also critical that the work continues to improve outcomes of people living with diabetes and address the challenges that confront them every day. 

Investing in clinical research helps those in healthcare develop a deeper understanding of the disease of diabetes, recognize the impact it has on patients and our communities and expands an understanding of what can help make improvements that are meaningful and accessible.

Launching an innovative program

To help support busy clinicians in their pursuit to improve the lives of persons living with diabesity or obesity, the institute launched the Clinical Translational Research Scholars Program in July 2019. The overall goal of the program is to identify and support the most promising early-stage scholars in the field of diabetes, obesity and metabolism. 

The program provides up to 50% salary support for up to three years, protecting this time from clinical care duties to allow successful clinical research scholarly activities. It also provides strong mentoring regarding research and career advancement.

Since its launch, four scholars have successfully completed the program, including Lindsay Ellsworth, M.D. and Brian Schmidt, D.P.M., who were among the first. Ellsworth was selected for her project “Impact of Mother’s Own Milk Compared to Donor Human Milk on Preterm Infant Metabolomics, Growth, and Metabolism.” 

“The most beneficial piece of the program was the time out of clinic and the mentor guidance over the past three years,” Ellsworth said. “My mentor has helped me make new connections across campus with new collaborators. This program has helped me meet more diabetes/metabolic focused researchers that were outside of my world.”

Schmidt became part of the program through his project “The Role of the Microbiome in Diabetic Foot Ulcers.” Notably, since receiving the program's support, Schmidt became the first-ever podiatrist in the National Institutes of Health history, and U.S. history, to receive a K23 award. A K23 award provides individuals, who have a clinical doctoral degree, with an intensive, supervised, patient-oriented research experience. It provides support and “protected time” for individuals considered to be on the path of a productive, independent clinical research career.

“The CTRSP program has benefited my career in ways unimaginable,” Schmidt said.

Another example is Yu Kuei (Alex) Lin, M.D., who entered the program through his project, “A Personalized Mobile Health Program for improving Hypoglycemia Management in Adults with type 1 Diabetes." Lin has already received an NIH K23 Award where he will continue to advance diabetes technology by developing scalable, personalized behavioral interventions.

Another is Kara Mizokami-Stout, M.D., whose project focused on continuous glucose monitoring and T2 diabetes, who shared that “the pilot data generated from this Clinical Translational Research Scholars Program project provided the opportunity [for me] to receive a K23 Career Development Award from the NIDDK.” 

Her work will continue to assess and address multilevel barriers in CGM technology.

All early-career faculty members seeking to establish a career in clinical/translational research relevant to diabetes (including obesity, metabolism, and the complications of diabetes) are eligible and encouraged to apply. For more information regarding the Clinical Translational Research Scholars Program, please contact [email protected].

This article was additionally edited by Allison Mi.