Author: Linxi Mytkolli

Share in an evening of storytelling and science in honour of this life-saving discovery

On April 14, 2021 from 4:30 to 8:15 p.m. ET, the Banting & Best Diabetes Centre, Diabetes Action Canada, and the University of Toronto Department of Medicine will bring together a diverse group of speakers to share their stories about how the discovery of insulin has changed their lives for the better.

Open to everyone, this virtual event, 100 Years of Insulin: Celebrating its impact on our lives, will highlight the latest advances related to insulin, as well as the stories of those who are alive today because of this discovery.

“Toronto is understandably proud of its role in the discovery of insulin, which took place here at the University of Toronto,” says Dr. Gary Lewis, Director of the Banting & Best Diabetes Centre and Scientific Co-Lead for Diabetes Action Canada. “We are thrilled to be able to celebrate virtually with friends and colleagues from across Canada thanks to the generous support of our sponsor, Sun Life. I hope that all those who attend will leave inspired by the work being done in this country to further the legacy of Banting, Best, Collip and Macleod.”

Topics covered at the celebration will include, diabetes through an Indigenous lens, the importance of having people living with diabetes involved in the research process, new developments in diabetes treatment, and how to thrive with diabetes. In addition, Canada Post will unveil its newest commemorative stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin.

“Every day of my professional career as a diabetes specialist I am privileged to help people use insulin in the best possible way to live healthy, active lives,” says Dr. Jacqueline James, Department of Medicine Division Director, Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of Toronto. “At this event attendees will learn about the many ways that current approaches have improved how insulin is used today, and what is hoped for the future.”

This free, public celebration has been generously supported by Sun Life. They are a leader in supporting diabetes awareness, prevention and care in Canada. Sun Life has a long history of supporting health and wellness and their commitment to improving the lives of people living with diabetes.

This event is one of many that will be held as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. On April 15th and 16th the University of Toronto’s Scientific Symposium will provide comprehensive updates on the latest advances in diabetes treatment and management through a series of online educational sessions and live, online, panel discussions with the experts from around the world. In addition, numerous other partner events will take place throughout the year.

The full agenda for the public celebration is available here.

Register now to secure your place!

About Diabetes Action Canada:
Diabetes Action Canada is a Canadian research organization that was launched in 2016. It is funded jointly by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s (CIHR)  Strategic Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) program, non-profit organizations, and private sponsors. The Network focuses on bringing people with diabetes, their caregivers and researchers together to identify the health concerns of those living with diabetes and to co-create research projects that address these concerns. Diabetes Action Canada partners and collaborate with university research teams across Canada, non-profit organizations, and provincial governments to plan, execute and evaluate these research projects so we can improve patient outcomes and experiences.

About the Banting & Best Diabetes Centre:
The Banting & Best Diabetes Centre (BBDC) was established in 1978 as an extra-departmental unit of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto with the primary objective of advancing diabetes research, education, and patient care. It now has a network of over 200 faculty and health care providers involved in diabetes research, education and care from various departments at the University of Toronto and its affiliated hospitals and research institutes. The BBDC offers several grants, studentships, fellowships, and other support for qualified individuals involved in diabetes research at the University of Toronto and its affiliated hospitals and research institutes. It also hosts scientific conferences to facilitate the exchange of scientific information and ideas, and to assist in the development of collaborative diabetes research activities both locally and internationally.  The Centre also develops continuing health education and quality improvement initiatives for all members of the diabetes health care team.

About the University of Toronto Department of Medicine:
The Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto is one of the oldest departments of its kind in North America, dating back to the founding of the School of Medicine in 1843. A major milestone in the department’s history was the establishment of the Sir John and Lady Eaton Professorship of Medicine in 1919; the first endowed chair in clinical medicine in what was then the British Empire. Now, the Department of Medicine is one of the largest in North America, with 800 full-time faculty members, 1,000 postgraduate trainees, and 20 sub-specialty divisions. One third of Canada’s, and one half of Ontario’s, internal medicine specialists received their training here. The Department of Medicine is also a research powerhouse with $162+ million annual research funding. Our research generates new knowledge with the goal of meaningfully impacting internal medicine training and the care and health outcomes of patients and their families.

Congratulations to our Health Technology Assessment and Network Analytics team, who collaborated on a recent research protocol: Impact of Intersecting Systems of Oppression on Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Among Those Who Identify as Women of Low Socioeconomic Status: Protocol for a Convergent Mixed Methods Study.

The protocol, whose lead author is Dr. Aleksandra Stanimirovic, was published in JMIR Research Protocols. It outlines the process that will be used to explore gender disparity in the provision of tele-retina program services for diabetic retinopathy screening in a cohort of women of low socioeconomic status (SES) receiving services in South Riverdale Community Health Centre (SRCHC) between 2014 and 2019.

This study is the first Ontario study to focus on diabetic retinopathy screening practices in women of low SES, with the aim to improve their health outcomes and revolutionize access to quality care.

Learn more and read the protocol here.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of Connect1d Canada, a patient-driven digital platform that allows those with type 1 diabetes (T1D) to easily learn about innovative treatments from across Canada, while contributing to research in the areas that matter most to them. Connect1d also allows researchers to easily engage people living with T1D from across Canada, enabling rapid recruitment of diverse patients into research studies.

The platform addresses some of the major barriers, including awareness and understanding of available research projects, that exist in T1D research. By providing this direct link between people living with the condition and researchers focused in this area, more people living with T1D become aware of opportunities, and research teams have a more diverse pool of candidates to work with.

Connect1d Canada was co-designed by people living with T1D and researchers, ensuring that the needs and wants of both groups were incorporated. It is an opt-in registry, which means that any Canadian adult with T1D can choose to share their information with research teams. Those participating control how their information is shared and with whom.

Visit the Connect1d Canada website.
Listen to the Actions on Diabetes podcast episode about this topic.
Watch our recent webinar on the project.

This month, the Indigenous Youth Mentorship Program (IYMP) was named one of eleven programs in the Healthy Futures Initiative by LEAP | Pecaut Centre for Social Impact’s Health Futures Accelerator.

With support from the Public Health Agency of Canada, LEAP is providing in-depth strategic and operational support, coaching, capacity building and funding to the selected social ventures. The goal of this support is for recipient programs to scale and increase their combined impact to reach even more Canadians over the next five years.

IYMP is a relationship-based, mentor-led healthy living afterschool program delivered by Indigenous adolescents for children in their community. This investment from LEAP will allow the IYMP team to enhance its programming in the existing 50 communities where it currently operates, and expand to more than 100 plus communities in the next five years.

The funding will make a meaningful difference in the lives of participants, bringing needed resources to continue to grow a program aimed at providing tailored health strategies to individual communities.

“We’ve reframed diabetes prevention in a culturally-safe framework and we focus on resilience,” says Dr. Jonathan McGavock, a Settler scientist from the University of Manitoba, an investigator at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, and Diabetes Action Canada researcher, who is helping support the research arm of IYMP. “By engaging Indigenous youth from their community in adapting and delivering the program, they can tailor it in the ways that work best. This peer mentoring, culturally-safe program overcomes the Westernized individualized approach.”

Since its inception, IYMP has received support from Diabetes Action Canada and other funding organizations, which allowed the team to slowly build capacity and prove that their success could translate to a larger number of communities. This additional funding from LEAP will provide even more opportunities for growth and will allow IYMP to move from a research home to a community-based organization called Ever Active Schools. It will also allow for important messaging about diabetes to take hold in the minds of youth who may be at risk.

“We tend to blame diabetes on people. You haven’t done this, you haven’t done that,” says McGavock. “We take that out of it. We’re really trying to rethink this so that it can be something that’s sustained in the long term, but also is culturally safe and grounded in the teachings and Indigenous knowledge that communities have had for millennia.”

While COVID has caused the program to pivot this year, McGavock has been inspired by the ingenuity that the young adults running the program have shown in adapting. They have offered outdoor lunch programs, virtual programming and other solutions that help meet youth where they are at, including adjusting programming times to reflect new online school schedules.

The face-to-face training sessions and large team gatherings that have been a highlight of the program in past years, bringing together youth from across Canada to connect, share and learn from each other, have had to be temporarily halted. McGavock and the IYMP team across Canada are eager to get back to doing that work, but also excited to see that even without those opportunities to bond, the program is thriving.

“We can’t travel to communities; they can’t travel to see us. So that’s going to be a challenge,” says McGavock. “But we want to connect more deeply with communities, through web platforms, through storytelling. This past spring, we did two months of fireside chats with Elders and reflections from the community on what IYMP means to them. We’ve really tried to connect ourselves more deeply as a group, and see if we can broaden it more widely, or more deeply within the community and reach more kids.”

Learn more about the Indigenous Youth Mentorship Program.

Learn more about LEAP Pecaut Centre for Social Change.

Congratulations to the University of Toronto’s Family Medicine Department on the launch of their 2020 University of Toronto Family Medicine Report: Caring for Our Diverse Populations.

The report illustrates the critical role of family doctors in caring and advocating for the communities they serve.

You can learn more about the report and read it on the U of T website.

Two years ago, the SGBA+ team at Women’s College Research Institute (WCRI) launched The Health Researcher’s Toolkit, a series of seven interactive e-learning modules focused on the integration of sex and gender in health research. The modules are designed to benefit both experienced and emerging researchers across a range of disciplines, from medical sciences to social sciences and everything in between.

This week the team launched a new eighth module, Intersectionality as a Research Lens: A Pathway to Better Science, which explores what intersectionality means, how it shapes a person’s lived identity and why it’s relevant.

We know health research that includes an intersectional lens is more scientifically rigorous and responsive to the diverse health needs of people in Ontario, across Canada and around the world. Similarly, intersectionality can advance equity because it helps us understand how a person’s multiple identity factors can lead to discrimination or privilege. As such, intersectionality plays a dual role in shaping health outcomes as well as an individual’s lived experience.

This new module is an important tool to help public health practitioners and health researchers better understand and apply an intersectionality lens to their projects, proposals, and studies.