Equity in research is one of the fastest growing areas within the global health equity movement and efforts being made to tackle this issue increasingly have manifested in the diabetes space. In one of the latest moves to enhance diabetes equity research, the National Institutes of Health has pledged $13 million to a trio of health systems to spearhead the creation of a first-of-its-kind National Center for Engagement in Diabetes Equity Research (CEDER).
The research and health systems awarded the pledge to foster greater community-engaged diabetes research are NYU Langone Health, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
CEDAR’s mission is to improve diabetes patients’ health outcomes, particularly among historically underrepresented populations. While over ten percent of individuals in the U.S. have type 2 diabetes and roughly forty percent of adults have prediabetes, certain minority populations have been reported to be more than two-times as likely to die from diabetes than White populations.
As research has demonstrated the effectiveness of culturally tailored initiatives executed among researchers, healthcare providers, and community organizations, CEDAR’s funding also will include monies earmarked to train researchers in health equity and to support both online and in-person trainings. CEDAR has a growing number of partners, including academic medical centers and community-based organizations. We will continue to follow its growth in the months to come. Likewise, we continue to support and encourage efforts to improve equity in health research and we are confident that 2024 will be a year of great gains in this space.
