User:J1000Y/sandbox

= UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence = UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence, located in Worcester, MA, is a part of University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, which is itself a partner of UMass Memorial Health, the largest healthcare system in Central Massachusetts. Though the exact date of founding of the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence remains unpublished, the center was likely founded after UMass Medical Center, UMass Medical School’s main teaching hospital, was opened in 1974. The current co-directors are Dale L. Greiner, PhD, and David M. Harlan, MD.

Diabetes Care Services
A not-for-profit, UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence states that their goal is “a world without diabetes.” They offer many different services related to diabetes care, for Type 1, Type 2, or Gestational diabetes. For general care, a team of endocrinologists (MD) and nurse practitioners (NP), certified diabetes care and education specialists (CDCES) and nutritionists develop personalized programs for each patient. If necessary, the center also provides specialty clinics, including diabetes eye care, inpatient blood glucose management, kidney disease treatment, heart & vascular care, and transplant diabetes.

Population Served
Though exact numbers for their current or past patient population, they generally serve the following municipalities in Central Massachusetts: Grafton, Millbury, Shrewsbury, West Boylston, and Worcester. In total, this population amounts to about 263,000 people. With an estimated 8.0% of adults in Worcester County having diabetes, about 21,000 people in their potential patient population have diabetes—though not all 21,000 are visiting the Diabetes Center of Excellence.

Diabetes Education
Serving both adults and children, UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence also has programs that educate and empower patients and their families to navigate diabetes treatment. Their American Diabetes Association accredited Diabetes Education and Self-Management Support program supported 4,000 patients in 2023, across Worcester’s UMass Memorial Medical Center, UMass Memorial Children’s Hospital, Health Alliance Hospital in Leominster, and Tri-River Family Health Center in Uxbridge. During the education and support sessions, patients learn about healthy nutrition, insulin pumps & continuous glucose monitors (CGM), diabetes medication, preventing acute & chronic complications, and physical activity.

On top of this program’s wide reach of patients, the individual and group classes also proved successful, leading to a 1.7% reduction in A1c and unmeasured decreases in blood glucose levels in 2023. These results, UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence claims are similar to those of medicine “but without side effects.” Moreover, participants learn self-care behaviors and gain personalized plans that help patients manage diabetes and build a better lifestyle overall. In fact, a core part of the program involves meeting with a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist (CDCES) to help participants create this plan.

Research
As an affiliate of UMass Memorial Medical Center, UMass Children's Medical Center, and UMass Chan Medical School, the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence hosts research that studies diabetes through examining human tissues and human cells in biological models that build an environment similar to the human immune system. With special care to prevention, research at the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence aims to first understand what causes diabetes, then develop therapies and cures with this foundational information.

Specifically, within Type 1 Diabetes research, researchers at UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence are finding ways to overcome the challenge of studying insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, as human biopsies of the pancreas are difficult and rodent models fail to mirror human Type 1 Diabetes. Thus, researchers have created “human” mouse models that mirror a human immune system environment, allowing them to study human cells and tissue. In addition, they have developed better techniques for conducting biopsies on pancreases from deceased donors. By comparing cell types in the pancreas of people from different demographic and stages of diabetes, they hope to better understand how beta cells and immune cells function. Finally, UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence researchers have developed novel methods for isolating and studying individual human islets—a small portion of human tissue distinct from surrounding tissue—that provide insight into each cell’s progress during autoimmune attacks at different stages of diabetes. Studying these islets helps the researchers understand how human immune cells and beta cells interact and, hopefully, how beta cells dye during autoimmune attacks.

As for Type 2 Diabetes research at UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence, labs are making efforts to overcome challenges such as (1) the inability to replicate Type 2 Diabetes in rodents in lab setting, (2) isolating the “beige” fat cells in humans that have been shown to reduce diabetes, and (3) finding the cause of the Type 2 diabetes, as the disease stretches across multiple organs and affects insulin processes in the pancreas, liver, muscle, and body fat. Researchers at UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence have found that all the fat in the human body is capable of generating beige fat, which would greatly aid diabetes treatment. In addition, RNA and gene therapy experts are studying how to use CRISPR and other gene editing tools to boost sugar metabolism.