While there has been much progress in building an evidence base to prevent diabetes and its complications, and some important improvements in quality of care and incidence of vascular complications among people with diagnosed diabetes over the past 25 years, there is a large unfinished agenda. Identification of people at risk and with diabetes, and uptake of prevention programs are all suboptimal; much more can be done to achieve recommended care goals and reduce morbidity, especially among the vulnerable and minorities. Translation research and data, especially in the areas of health services research, design, and evaluation can help close the gaps by tailoring diabetes prevention and control efforts to better suit target populations, and by generating policy- and practice-oriented data to inform investments in diabetes interventions. Though there appears to be plentiful demand in the Southeastern US, availability of relevant expertise in health services research, design, and evaluation is limited and/or fragmented in the region. The Georgia Diabetes Translation Research Center's Core B (Design and Evaluation) is poised to fill this void by offering an accessible, cohesive, and multi-disciplinary team of reputed experts in diabetes translation research. Core B's collective expertise, networks and partnerships, and access to key national and regional datasets (e.g., the Veterans Affairs and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid data), make it well-suited for stimulating high-quality diabetes translation research and uptake among a wide array of stakeholders (academics, health care, companies, non- profits, and local governments). Core B Faculty bring extensive expertise and experiences, and will engage in three main areas: 1) facilitating health services research, especially through the use of large datasets to generate more state- and local-level data for analytics-driven informed decision-making; 2) assisting investigators in designing patient-centered preventive and care services, facilitating practice change, and developing information management systems; and 3) assisting intervention, program, and policy evaluations using multi-disciplinary approaches (quantitative, qualitative, and economic) and perspectives (patient, provider, payers, and systems). Core B Faculty have training in clinical medicine (primary care, geriatrics, endocrinology, preventive cardiology), nursing, systems design, engineering, statistics, demography, epidemiology, nutrition, business and management, and economics. The Core will embed a culture of multi- disciplinarity, collegiality, continuous learning, and leverage. The Core's reputable Faculty will engage in the Center's catalyst and dissemination activities (Enrichment and P and F Programs, and Regional Core) and will be an accessible, active group with simple operating and reporting structures that help facilitate more effective and cost-effective science. Leveraging this Core's collective expertise and resources offers an expedient and efficient opportunity to advance the field, improving tailoring of services for the increasingly diverse US population, and informing local guidelines to improve metabolic health in the region.
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