Draft:Dana Dabelea

Dana Dabelea is a current endowed professor of epidemiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and also director of the Lifecourse Epidemiology of Adiposity and Diabetes (LEAD) Center. Her main research interest focuses on how both internal and external factors can influence how diabetes and obesity develops within individuals.

Early Life and Education
Dabelea was born in Romania. She obtained her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timisoara, Romania. In addition, she received her Doctor of Philosophy degree and completed her residency from there as well. Her postdoctoral fellowship in epidemiology was completed at the National Institutes of Health in their Diabetes Epidemiology and Field Studies in Phoenix, Arizona. The fellowship was focused on diabetes research within the Pima Indians population. After her studies and fellowship, she began to focus on type 2 diabetes rates, specifically in those of the younger generation.

Career
As the current director of the Lifecourse Epidemiology of Adiposity and Diabetes (LEAD) Center, she manages multiple longitudinal cohort studies that range from in utero, neonatal, and early childhood. . These studies focus on how type 1 and type 2 diabetes have affected Colorado's youth over the last decade. The center also has research teams and cohorts to help groups that don't have participants for their own studies.

Dabelea is also the principal investigator for Healthy Start, a study from the LEAD Center that specializes in intrauterine effects on newborns and infants. She has explained that the study explores how developmental overnutrition potentially has a correlation to childhood obesity and therefore outcomes such as diabetes and heart disease. Some of the featured research projects that Dabelea was the principal investigator for include: Exploring Perinatal Outcomes among Children (EPOCH), SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth, Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS), and Tribal Turning Point (TTP).

From 2021-2023, Dabelea was the Chair of the Scientific Planning Committee for the American Diabetes Association.

With over 700 publications, she continues to explore different sectors including pediatric obesity, diabetes prevention, lifecourse epidemiology, and Native American health.

Awards
Awards that Dabelea has received include the Excellence in Faculty Research from the Colorado School of Public Health (2010), the Conrad Riley Endowed Professor from the Colorado School of Public Health (2013), and the Graduate School Mentoring Award from the University of Colorado (2014).

Dabelea received the Elizabeth Gee Memorial Lectureship Award in 2017. . At the ceremony, she presented a lecture where she focused on her career over the years and how she mentors and supports the University of Colorado community. In addition, she received the American Diabetes Association Kelly West Award the same year. The award is specifically for epidemiology and she also gave a lecture about pediatric diabetes. She focused on what she's found from her previous studies about how diabetes in youth can potentially be prevented or what the life-long effects are.

Personal Life
Dabelea enjoys hiking in her free time.