ACHORD Newsletters

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Volume 12, Issue 3, December 2012

Report from the Chair

Hello All! Here we are coming to the end of 2012, another busy year in ACHORD. Here is a quick update on what we have been up to in the past few months.  

Since the announcement in our last newsletter, my new role as Scientific Director of the Obesity, Diabetes and Nutrition Strategic Clinical Network with AHS has certainly been keeping me busy, making new connections around the province, and strengthening previous connections and collaborations.  As I am climbing the learning curve, I am excited about the possibilities to be involved in many innovations that help to reduce the burden of chronic diseases in the province.

Many ACHORD members and trainees have presented their research at various meetings and over the past few months. A number of abstracts were presented at the EASD Annual Meeting in Berlin and the CDA Annual Meeting in Vancouver. A special note of congratulations to Robin Lau, PhD student, who was presented with the Canadian Diabetes Association/Diabetes Educator Section 2012 Brian Dufton Memorial Manuscript Award for his manuscript entitled "Predicting the Future Burden of Diabetes in Alberta from 2008 to 2035". Posters and/or presentations were also made at the 2012 RTNA Conference in Banff, Qualitative Health Research Conference in Montreal, Accelerating Primary Care Conference in Banff, National Strategic Summit: Road map for Physical Activity, Lifestyle and Comparative Effectiveness Research in Phoenix, Arizona and the International Congress on Physical Activity and Public Health in Sydney, Australia.

The Alberta's Caring for Diabetes (ABCD) project has kept us very busy in the past few months. Patients with type 2 diabetes participating in the TeamCare and HEALD pilot studies, which were supported by our partner PCNs, will finish all of the follow-up early in the New Year. As such, we're shifting our attention from implementation to data analysis and evaluation activities, which will be a big focus for us in 2013. In addition, an new aquatic-based physical activity program, APEXD, has been launched with one of our partner PCNs under the umbrella of the ABCD project. The ABCD Cohort study is well underway. The first year of recruitment will come to a close December 31, 2012; I'm happy to report that approximately 1600 people with type 2 diabetes around the province have joined the study to date. We look forward to following this cohort for the next several years.

We have been invited to submit a full application to the Alberta Innovations Health Solutions CRIO competition. We have held a meeting of the core investigator group and have a lot of work ahead of us before submitting the final proposal in mid-January. A number of operating grants were submitted to CIHR in the fall competition, so we are awaiting results from these applications in the New Year. Planning for the 10th Annual ACHORD Retreat is underway. The retreat will be held March 7 & 8, 2013 at The Banff Centre and this year's theme is "Challenging the single-disease 'diabetes' framework in health care and research: Where are we headed?" We are looking forward to meeting with many of our friends and colleagues in Banff in a few months.

As in most updates, we have had more personnel changes in our group. In October, Dr. Calypse Agbosangaya ended his Post Doctoral Fellowship with ACHORD and became a Research Associate with ACHORD. Calypse will work with myself, and Drs. Majumdar and Padwal. In December, we welcomed Dr. Nonsikelelo (Nonsi) Mathe as a Post Doctoral Fellow in ACHORD and in January we have a new PhD student joining us, Hayford Avedzi. Both Nonsi and Hayford have backgrounds in nutrition, and will work with myself and Dr. Steve Johnson in projects related to lifestyle interventions for diabetes.

Well that is a brief update - I wish each and every one of you all the best in the holiday season and hope that you are able to enjoy time with family and friends. I look forward to updating you on the ACHORD activities again in the New Year!