The Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC), in its 33rd continuous year of operation as a NIH-sponsored Diabetes Center, and seeks to continue its efforts to facilitate the discovery, application, and translation of scientific knowledge to improve the care of patients with diabetes. The Vanderbilt DRTC is an interdisciplinary program involving 98 participating faculty distributed among 18 departments in two schools and four colleges at Vanderbilt and at neighboring Meharry Medical College. The DRTC consists of: 1) Administrative Component that coordinates the scientific, organizational, and outreach activities of the DRTC; 2) Biomedical Research Component that recruits and selects DRTC-affiliated investigators and supervises the research cores that facilitate and enhance their research; 3) Prevention/Control Core with a Clinical Outcomes and Behavioral Sciences Unit at Vanderbilt and a Community Outreach and Health Disparities Unit (funded by a supplement to the Vanderbilt DRTC for Meharry Medical College), that work cooperatively; 4) Pilot and Feasibility Program that facilitates the development of new investigators into fully independent scientists and encourages scientists in other fields to enter the field of diabetes research; and 5) Enrichment, Training, and Outreach Program that fosters an environment conducive to collaborative, interdisciplinary research (seminar series, Diabetes Day, visiting scientists), and to training new diabetes scientists (DRTC oversees three NIH-funded diabetes-related training programs). NIH support for the DRTC is greatly amplified by: 1) Vanderbilt's sustained commitment to provide research space and additional financial resources; 2) a diverse, comprehensive array of research core services at Vanderbilt, which allows NIH funds to target unique, diabetes-related research cores; 3) opening of the Vanderbilt Eskind Diabetes Clinic, which provides a new venue for the clinical and translational research of the DRTC; 4) collaborative efforts with other NIH-funded research centers at Vanderbilt such as the GCRC; and 5) a formal Meharry- Vanderbilt Alliance that encourages research on health disparities related to diabetes. The activities of the DRTC are evolving and dynamic; they include additions to its investigator base, expansion of DRTC research areas, expanded focus on clinical and translational research (participant in CTSA efforts at Vanderbilt), and realignment and evolution of core support to provide unique, indispensable core services. Because of the DRTC and the environment it creates, DRTC-affiliated investigators have made important scientific contributions in basic science, clinical research, and translational science related to diabetes. As encouraged by the RFA, the Vanderbilt DRTC is also serving as a regional and national resource for the diabetes research community by working cooperatively with other academic centers.
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