Nearly 1,500 people of all ages gathered at the University of South Florida this Saturday, Nov. 14, to stride forward together in the American Diabetes Association’s StepOut to Fight Diabetes Walk. The ADA’s signature fundraising walk, coinciding with National Diabetes Day, was held at more than 150 sites across the country.
Hosting the walk was a chance for USF to showcase its bold initiative to fight diabetes on every front – from education and research to family-centered care. The University is planning a new center for people with diabetes – an inviting place that will be a hub for the diabetes community and where patients can practice the healthy eating habits and exercise so vital to diabetes.
The USF community was an integral part of the event. Teams from across the university walked to raise funds that will support critical research, provide community-based education programs and protect the rights of people with diabetes – a chronic disease expected to confront one in three U.S. children if current trends continue.
“It was a great opportunity for us to show the Tampa Bay community our commitment and forward momentum in the fight against diabetes,” said Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999 and director of communications and education for the USF Diabetes Center. “We were honored to partner with the ADA and play a role in fundraising for better treatment and an ultimate cure for diabetes.”
Johnson worked with the ADA to coordinate the walk, emceed the event, and led post-walk tours of the center’s new educational space. USF Health student volunteers helped conduct health screenings. Staff and faculty volunteered at booths for heart health education, stroke awareness and podiatry screening.
Adults and children had the opportunity to be screened for the TrialNet studies, which seeks to identify those with early signs of Type 1 diabetes to investigate new therapies that may halt or slow disease progression. The NIH-sponsored worldwide network of clinical studies is coordinated at USF by Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, professor and chief of epidemiology in the Department of Pediatrics.
See photo gallery of the day’s activates below:
Dr. Stephen Klasko, USF medical school dean and CEO of USF Health, gives a pep talk before the walk.
Nicole Johnson, director of communications and education for the USF Diabetes Center, greets walkers.
A zumba troupe warms up the crowd.
Walkers assemble at the starting line.
The route started and finished at USF Simmons Park near the Psychology/Communication Building.
Cara Capitena, a first-year USF medical student, checks Diana Persaud's blood pressure.
Nicole Johnson, with daugher Ava, helped lead post-walk tours showing off the USF Diabetes Center's new education space.
Johnson welcomes a group of young walkers to one of the Diabetes Center's child-friendly areas.
- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, Photos by Eric Younghans; USF Health Communicatons
Kaitlin Spears, a 9-year-old Pinellas County resident, doesn't let her insulin pump stop her from coloring on the floor during a USF focus group at the Children With Diabetes conference.
If you imagined the perfect place for children with diabetes, what would it have?
For families of these children, the list is long and varied: Health professionals who really understand diabetes. Less time waiting to be seen. Someone available to answer questions at all hours of the day, who can tell parents what to do when their child's blood sugar is too high at midnight.
A medical center that has healthy extras: a gym, a kitchen, and a children's play area.
More places to learn about diabetes and more people to teach it.
And, maybe most of all, each other.
"To meet other people" with diabetes, said Clearwater parent Scott Roan. "To learn from others."
Those were among the items on the wish list at an unusual focus group meeting hosted by USF Health Wednesday in Orlando at "Friends for Life," an international conference sponsored by Children With Diabetes, Inc. USF invited families there to brainstorm. The university is planning a new center for people with diabetes and wanted to hear from families about their needs.
The focus group, led by Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999 and director of communications and education for the USF Diabetes Center, became a standing-room only crowd. It included parents and children with diabetes, as well as doctors and other health care providers.
Two other USF Health staffers - Michael Hoad, vice president of communications, and Jay Wolfson, assistant vice president for health law, policy and safety - prepared to help Johnson lead the focus group by getting some first-hand experience. Johnson made both men spend 24 hours wearing an insulin pump. Johnson has Type 1 diabetes herself, so the ones they wore were just like hers: hot pink.
The hot pink triplets: Jay Wolfson, Nicole Johnson and Michael Hoad (L to R) show off their matching insulin pumps.
Parents told the USF trio that finding out your child has diabetes is an overwhelming, often isolating experience. With that moment of diagnosis, their lives changed forever - yet they often felt lost. They had been thrown into deep water with little knowledge and fewer resources.
"You're sent home and supposed to be Dr. Mom," said Tampa parent Alysia Ekizian. "It would be great if there were someone you could get 24 hours. We, as parents, need constant coaching."
Parents often feel that they don't have anywhere to turn for that kind of help. What's more, outside of their children's endocrinologists, sometimes even the medical professionals seem to know little about their problems. Roan once brought his daughter to the emergency room because she was suffering from ketosis, a condition that occurs when chemical ketones start building up in the body because insulin is too low and the body starts breaking down fat for energy. Because insulin levels are low, blood sugar levels also rise.
"They come back and say, ‘Did you know, her sugar is high?' " Roan told the group with exasperation.
Another parent said one doctor told him it was the first time he had ever seen an insulin pump.
Such stories are one reason USF Health wants to develop a center that specializes in care for diabetes, Wolfson said. Studies have shown that when diabetes patients need other medical care, whether it's for having knee surgery or giving birth, caring for their diabetes often gets lost in the shuffle.
"Things break down a lot," Wolfson said. "They don't seem to be able to coordinate with your diabetes."
Health care providers aren't the only ones with that problem, said Holly Plotts, a Pennsylvania mom whose teen-age daughter has diabetes. Parents sometimes find that schools are reluctant to let children check their sugar or carry snacks, and may not know that federal law requires them to accommodate diabetes.
Pennsylvania cardiologist Bob Bulgarelli told the group that he envisions a diabetes center where patients don't feel like they're visiting an uncomfortable doctor's office. No exam rooms with paper on the tables, he said. Lamps and cozy furniture. A gym and a kitchen, so people can practice the healthy eating and exercise habits that are so important to diabetes.
Cardiologist Bob Bulgarelli talks about what diabetes patients need.
"It needs to be more than your standard terrible box office," Dr. Bulgarelli said. "It can be a place they can spend the day."
Again and again, parents returned to the importance of having children be able to meet other children with diabetes . They want their kids to play with other kids who wear insulin pumps. Kids who don't think it's weird to check your blood sugar. Kids who understand how you feel when your blood sugar gets low.
The best part of the Orlando conference, parents said, was to watch their children doing exactly that. Imagine a center where parents could do that in their own hometown, said Adina Singer, of Quebec. She envisioned a place that would provide health care, yet also be something of a hub for the diabetes community. It could host support groups, social events, even the occasional party.
"You want to recruit families. You want families to join you and stay with you for years and years," Singer said. "You want to create something that's more inviting... A place where people are going to want to come."
-- Story and photos by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications
Who says exercise can’t be fun? Grace Emery jumps on her mini-trampoline when her blood sugar gets too high.
Grace Emery loves jumping on her mini-trampoline but already dreams of law school.
She makes plans for a high-school trip but wears a sweatshirt from George Washington University.
She still gets squeamish just looking at her own veins but knows too much about grown-up fears.
Grace is 17, and she has Type I diabetes.
So she fits a chronic disease, one that demands attention and energy every day, into her life, around the tennis team and her fencing class and the sailing on Lake Tarpon and the once-in-a-lifetime trip to see Barack Obama become president.
“It’s a huge part of my life,” Grace said of her diabetes, “But I don’t let it limit what I can and can’t do.”
So yes, Grace went to see the inauguration with a teen leadership group she has belonged to for years. Just like all the other kids, she partied at a youth Inaugural Ball, heard Colin Powell speak, and watched the ceremony by the reflecting pool.
She just carried extras with her: a backpack with snacks and insulin pens. A stash of extra insulin pens back at the hotel, just in case.
Sometimes it’s hard. There are no days off, no coffee breaks, no rest stops. When you have diabetes, you can’t escape it.
“Even when you try to forget about it, you don’t,” she said. “It’s always, always, always, always there.”
So you just go on with it.
Grace and her mom, Mary Ellen, work on fixing healthy meals to help keep Grace’s diabetes under control.
Growing up in north Pinellas County, Grace lived an idyllic childhood: sailing on Lake Tarpon, playing volleyball, enrolling at Berkeley Preparatory School.
Everything changed when Grace was 14.
She didn’t realize anything serious was wrong. She got her blood work done for a temporary condition and the results were puzzling. Her blood sugar was sky-high. Grace got on the internet herself and looked up diabetes, and saw all the symptoms she had. She’d lost 15 pounds for no reason. She was always thirsty and always running to the bathroom.
Dr. Frank Diamond, a pediatrics professor with the USF College of Medicine, gave her the official diagnosis.
It was two days before Christmas. Her mother still cries when she thinks about it.
“It was just devastating,” said Mary Ellen Emery. “You just want to pull the sheets over your head, and then you think, you have to be the mom, and you go do the mom thing. But it’s not an easy diagnosis.”
The family had planned a holiday ski trip. Instead, Grace spent winter break learning about diabetes: how to change her diet, how to check her blood sugar, how to give herself injections.
“She’s a survivor,” her mom said.
It was an adjustment for the rest of the family too. Grace’s father, Ken, can no longer bring home bagels on a whim. Mary Ellen makes an effort not to focus family events and celebrations around meals. Ken helps Grace plan her injection schedule for trips.
“It’s what life is,” Mary Ellen said. “It’s not what we were bargaining for. But with love and faith and prayer and hope, you do it. Grace does a great job.”
Grace relies on the support of her parents, Ken and Mary Ellen Emery, to help her with the challenges of diabetes.
The injections were easier than Grace thought they would be. She was afraid she’d have to stick needles in her veins. Instead, she uses insulin pens, with short needles she injects directly into her skin, most often in her stomach or thigh, about five times a day.
Each day, Grace takes two kinds of insulin: two shots of a long-acting insulin to keep her blood sugar steady throughout the day, 23 mg. in the morning, 23 mg. at night.
She checks her blood sugar before school and has about five units of her fast-acting insulin just before breakfast.
Then it’s on to school, where she checks her blood sugar again and takes more insulin just before lunch. She tries to decide what she’ll eat first, so she’ll know how much insulin to take. She always carries snacks with her; her teachers know she has diabetes and don’t mind if she eats during class.
After school, it’s on to tennis practice or home. Sometimes, she’ll take more insulin.
Grace checks her sugar again just before dinner, and takes more insulin – usually six to eight units -- just before she eats.
Then she checks a final time before bed.
A few times each month, her sugar drops too low during the night.
“I wake up in a cold sweat,” she said. Then she comes downstairs and has something to eat.
Last year, Grace’s orderly routine shattered. She stopped taking her insulin. It’s still hard for her to explain why.
“It was just a phase,” she said. “For a week, I was lazy.”
What began as rebellion became something worse. After two weeks of not taking her insulin, she found she had lost 15 pounds.
So she kept skipping it – for three or four months. She lied about taking her shots, so Mary Ellen began insisting on watching her. Then she started pretending to inject herself, using the pen without delivering insulin. They argued about trust, about independence.
“It became constant monitoring,” Mary Ellen recalled. “It was very hard, and very, very scary.”
What Grace did isn’t unusual for diabetic teen girls. Many struggle to cope with managing a disease that requires compulsive attention to diet while navigating the body image worries of growing up. Dr. Diamond had warned Grace and Mary Ellen about deliberate weight loss, sometimes called “diabulimia,” when she was first diagnosed.
Grace had sworn never to try it.
Skipping insulin doses can cause weight loss because the body, unable to break down sugar without insulin, excretes it in urine. But it is dangerous – and Grace found that out firsthand. Without her insulin, her blood sugar levels soared. One day her vision suddenly became blurry. She couldn’t see anything clearly, not even objects a few feet away.
“I really couldn’t see,” she said. “I thought I was going blind.”
She knew she had to get her blood sugar back under control.
Grace had to visit an eye specialist and wear magnifying glasses for a while, but she was lucky. She learned her lesson without doing permanent damage to her eyes.
"It's a huge part of my life, but I don't let it limit what I can and can't do," Grace Emery, 17, says of her Type I diabetes.
These days, Grace has learned to balance her diabetes with a full round of school and extracurricular activities. Exercise helps control diabetes, and Grace plays on the school tennis team and takes a fencing class. She keeps a mini-trampoline out back to jump on when her blood sugar gets high – or just for fun.
At school, she’s involved in model United Nations, a teen court program and the Chinese Club. She’s been accepted early decision at George Washington, and says she wants to be a lawyer “because that’s the best way to change the world.” Her interest in politics led to the inauguration trip with the Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference.
Still… Grace has fears about the future as well. Every child with diabetes fears the complications that can come later with the disease, she said, and she rattled off a list: “My heart, my hands, my feet.”
Her biggest worry is whether she’ll be able to have children.
But Grace tries to keep those fears in perspective. After all, if she’s afraid of the future, at least she’s spent more time thinking about what lies ahead and what her goals are. With fear comes maturity and strength.
“I try to see it as a positive,” she said.
And that’s the advice she gives to other kids who have just been diagnosed.
“You may think it’s a little scary at first,” she said. “I know I did... Be strong and believe in yourself, and know you can do it.”
When Nicole Johnson first heard she had diabetes, she was a USF student. Alone and scared, she reacted to the news with a gesture of defiance: downing an entire 2-liter bottle of sugary Coke herself.
Now Johnson is back at USF. But she’s not the frightened student she once was. Johnson became Miss America in 1999, and she has transformed herself into one of the nation’s best-known advocates for diabetes education.
During her year as Miss America, Johnson criss-crossed the United States, preaching the importance of diabetes awareness. She showed off her insulin pump to kids who’d never seen one before. She helped convince thousands of people to get tested for diabetes.
Most of all, Johnson proved that having diabetes doesn’t have to close the door on your dreams.
After her term as Miss America, Johnson was offered a TV news job in a major market. But she turned it down, because she had already found her calling. Instead, Johnson has continued to speak out on behalf of people with diabetes. Now 35, she hosts a weekly TV show, dLifeTV, on CNBC, and operates her own Nicole Johnson Foundation to improve diabetes education. She serves on health advisory boards, consults for diabetes companies, and has written four books.
Nicole brings that same passion to helping USF expand its diabetes education programs and research capabilities.
“I’m so thrilled to be part of the USF diabetes team now,” Johnson said. “I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes while I was a student here at USF, so it’s just a really special full-circle type of moment for me.”
Because Johnson knows firsthand just how hard it is to be diagnosed with diabetes, she is acutely concerned with counseling and education available for people with diabetes. Health providers need to help people with diabetes understand how to manage diabetes in their daily lives, with plans adjusted for their special needs.
“Diabetes education all over this country is lacking a very specific thing, and that’s reality,” Johnson said. “We have to meet patients and families where they are, in their lifestyle, and tailor diabetes management to how they live.”
That education needs to include the patient’s family, as well as the patient, she said. Often the entire family needs to adjust their meals. And family members need to recognize the signs of a bad diabetes reaction or other medical problem.
Johnson also is pushing for more psychological counseling for people with diabetes and more discussion of the emotional impact of the disease.
“It’s incredibly overwhelming,” she said. “All of a sudden, in one second – ‘you have diabetes’ – your entire world changes. It flips, from how you exercise to how you function in your daily life, to what you eat, what your family eats, what you feed your children.”
Doctors, health educators and patients don’t talk enough about the emotional impact of diabetes, she said. But a disease that governs the choices you make every day inevitably affects your well-being.
The constant attention to diet can affect a patient's body image. The label “diabetic” can make a patient feel damaged or broken. The constant testing can make patients anxious or parents unable to sleep, afraid they might miss their child’s health crisis.
“When you’re looking at the meters and the monitors and looking at what the number of your blood sugar is, you’re often making a judgment of your self-worth,” Johnson said. “Or parents make a judgment of ‘how good a parent am I,’ based on that number. The psychosocial and emotional impact is tremendous. And it never stops.”
As a diabetes patient, Johnson also is excited about the possibilities that USF’s research could create for fighting the disease. She first became a participant in a clinical research trial three years ago, when she was pregnant with her daughter, Ava Grace.
During that trial, Johnson was fascinated to learn that her blood sugar control actually improved while she was pregnant. Such changes make her realize the potential for helping diabetes patients through research.
Johnson and her daughter also participated in two trials overseen by Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, the USF professor of pediatrics coordinating international studies on ways to prevent diabetes. So far, Ava Grace hasn’t shown any signs of the disease.
“We are doing everything we can to be part of the solution to diabetes,” Johnson said. “And that’s a message we want to take to other families all around this area.”
USF is launching on a bold new plan to fight diabetes on every front with its Center of Excellence for Diabetes and Autoimmune Disorders. Already a national leader in epidemiological research to understand and prevent diabetes, USF is working to dramatically increase its clinical research, expand its diabetes education program, and establish a comprehensive center that will offer patients a new level of care in Florida. USF hopes to build facilities to conduct research on possible cures for diabetes, in both outpatient and inpatient settings. More...
• USF’s Dr. Jeffrey Krischer has won more than $390 million in federal grant funding to study the causes of Type 1 diabetes, as well as how to prevent and treat the disease. USF has named Krischer to fill the new Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research at USF Health. More...
• USF is working to provide Florida residents the best information available about diabetes at its Diabetes Center, one of three approved by state legislators. We are deeply committed to leading the fight against diabetes, a devastating disease that affects more Americans every day. More...
Living with Diabetes: One Teen's Story
Grace Emery loves jumping on her mini-trampoline but already dreams of law school. Grace is 17, and she has Type I diabetes.
Tampa, FL (Dec. 1, 2008) -- Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, has been appointed to fill a new $1.4 million Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research at USF Health - another step in the university's ambitious initiative to create a nationally prominent program in diabetes and autoimmune disorders.
The university-bestowed endowment will build upon the success of the Diabetes and Pediatrics Epidemiology Centers directed by Dr. Krischer, professor and chief of epidemiology in the Department of Pediatrics. Under his leadership, USF has become a preeminent force in international studies of the epidemiology of Type 1 diabetes and clinical trials for diabetes prevention and treatment. The incidence of Type 1 diabetes, epidemic among children, has doubled worldwide since the 1980s.
"The research in diabetes complements our other projects in rare diseases, many of which also have an autoimmune component and may share common etiological pathways," said Dr. Krischer, who directs 50-plus researchers with expertise in developing and applying new technologies and informatics to medicine. "I believe we have the right combination of science and strategy to be able to eliminate Type I diabetes for the next generation."
Dr. Krischer's team has attracted a record total of $389 million in research funding to USF. His latest National Institutes of Health award – a $127.7-million TrialNet contract to coordinate worldwide studies that look for new ways to prevent and treat Type I diabetes – is expected to catapult USF into the top 50 U.S. medical schools in NIH funding. In addition to the TrialNet award, Dr. Krischer is principal investigator of a 10-year, $169-million NIH contract to lead the data coordinating and technology center for TEDDY, a study identifying environmental triggers of Type I diabetes.
Both TrialNet and TEDDY are being carried out on an international stage through NIH-sponsored clinical sites in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. None of these patient-oriented research sites are currently in the Tampa Bay region – something that USF wants to change.
"Without a doubt, Dr. Krischer's research excellence has strategically positioned USF to create an integrated program for controlling and treating diabetes and aggressively working toward its eradication," said Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, CEO for USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine. "The Tampa Bay area has excellent physicians caring for children and adults with diabetes, but to advance to the next level of care we must create a world-class clinical research and comprehensive care facility for patients with diabetes and related complications. It would offer patients in our community the opportunity to be part of the science that leads to a cure."
USF will use the Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research as a catalyst for private donations and additional endowments to support a campus-wide, fully integrated signature program in diabetes and autoimmune disorders. The university plans to begin recruiting an interdisciplinary team of basic, translational and clinical researchers, educators, physician-scientists and health care professionals needed to establish a multi-use clinical research center and diabetes education center at USF Health's north campus.
"Such a center would provide patients with diabetes and related autoimmune disorders access to the same state-of-the art clinical trials that Dr. Krischer is overseeing globally," said Abdul Rao, MD, MA, DPhil, senior associate vice president for USF Health and vice dean for research and graduate studies for the College of Medicine. "It would play a critical role in advancing the standard and quality of care in the Greater Tampa Bay area and beyond for patients suffering from diabetes and autoimmune disorders."
Type I diabetes is one of the most common and serious long-term diseases in children and adolescents. It is a disease in which the body's immune system attacks the cells that make insulin – a hormone that keeps blood sugar levels stable. Its treatment requires a life-long commitment to daily insulin injections and significant lifestyle changes.
- USF Health -
USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida's colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $360 million in research grants and contracts last year, USF is one of the nation's top 63 public research universities and one of 39 community-engaged, four-year public universities designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.health.usf.edu
The latest major NIH contract to USF’s Jeffrey Krischer and his team - $128 million - will coordinate worldwide studies looking for ways to prevent and treat childhood diabetes
Virtually every major center conducting type 1 diabetes research is now linked to the USF Pediatric Epidemiology Center led by Jeffrey Krischer, PhD
Tampa, FL (July 31, 2008) -- The National Institutes of Health has awarded $127.7 million to the University of South Florida research team led by Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, to coordinate worldwide studies on the prevention and treatment of juvenile diabetes. This latest funding, a seven-year award, supports Dr. Krischer’s coordination of the NIH network of clinical research centers known as TrialNet.
The award adds to the $169 million received last year by Dr. Krischer, a professor of pediatrics, to coordinate studies examining the causes of juvenile diabetes. That previously funded 10-year NIH study, known as TEDDY (The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young), is seeking to explain why the incidence of diabetes in the very young has doubled since the 1980s. The $169-million contract was the largest in USF’s history.
“Dr. Krischer’s new TrialNet award will catapult USF to the top 50 for NIH funding to medical schools,” said Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, senior vice president for USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine. “Almost every major effort worldwide to eliminate type 1 diabetes for the next generation comes through here.”
"Jeff sees connections other people don't see. He uses tools in new ways to solve very complex problems," said Karen Holbrook, PhD, Vice President for Research at USF. "It's an extraordinary program that is doing as much as any program today for people around the globe. It is innovative, and it is important."
“Jeff’s efforts continue to enhance our excellence in research in the area of diabetes and related diseases”, said Abdul S. Rao, MD. MA. DPhil, Senior Associate Vice President, USF Health. “This current grant goes a long way in establishing USF’s dominance in this field and the recognition by the NIH of the extraordinary scientific strides that have been made by Jeff and his colleagues”.
Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, is one of the most common and serious long-term diseases in children and adolescents. It is a disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the cells that make insulin – a hormone that keeps blood sugar levels stable. Its treatment requires a life-long commitment to daily insulin injections and significant lifestyle changes.
TrialNet will screen more than 150,000 children and adults, identifying those with early signs of diabetes to investigate new therapies that may arrest disease progression. Other studies include treatments of newly diagnosed patients to prevent continued loss of insulin production capability. These treatments, if proven successful, may be tested to determine if they can yield new prevention strategies. In addition to heading the data coordinating and technology center for TrialNet, Dr. Krischer chairs one of the major prevention studies within the consortium – a clinical trial investigating whether oral insulin can prevent or delay diabetes in a specific group of people at risk for type 1 diabetes.
TEDDY is screening more than 300,000 newborns and following 8,000 for up to 15 years to investigate the role that diet, infections, and other environmental factors may play in the disease process. Dr. Krischer chairs the study itself as well as directing TEDDY’s data coordinating center.
Both TrialNet and TEDDY are being carried out on an international stage through clinical sites in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand
The two projects complement each other, with virtually every major university and medical center conducting type 1 diabetes research now linked to Dr. Krischer’s Pediatric Epidemiology Center at USF. The center is pooling the clinical consortiums’ efforts to understand the triggers of diabetes and to develop strategies to prevent or improve treatment. Data describing the everyday lives of study participants, results from research laboratories across the globe, and the clinical course of the disease in affected individuals flow into USF on a continual basis.
All that data is analyzed at USF and shared with scientists, clinicians and investigators worldwide with the goal of putting an end to type 1 diabetes, Dr. Krischer said. “This team effort would not be possible without the outstanding group of 50-plus researchers at USF working on these studies. They are recognized world experts in developing new technologies and informatics applied to medicine,” he said. “The research in diabetes complements our other projects in rare diseases, many of which are also autoimmune diseases and share a common etiological pathway. The hope is that our efforts can lead to improvements for all those affected.”
Dr. Krischer, an epidemiologist, has attracted more than $389 million in research funding to USF.
- USF Health -
USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With $308 million in research funding last year, USF is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of Florida’s top three research universities.
