ADA to Honor Professional Interest Group Award Winners

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) will honor 4 leaders in advancing diabetes care, education, and research as recipients of the Professional Interest Group Awards at its 78th Scientific Sessions at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, from June 22 to 26, 2018.

"The recipients of this year's Professional Interest Group Awards, like the innovators who came before them, have significantly advanced our understanding of diabetes and have given us the tools to improve the lives of millions of people living with and affected by diabetes," the ADA's Chief Scientific, Medical, and Mission Officer William T. Cefalu, MD, said in a statement. "We congratulate each 1 of them and thank them for their exemplary work."

The Richard R. Rubin Award will be presented to Tim Wysocki, PhD, ABPP, the co-director of the Center for Health Care Delivery Science and Principle Research Scientist at Nemours Children’s Health System in Jacksonville, Florida. He will present the Richard R. Rubin Award Lecture, Diabetes and Behavior in the 21st Century: Things That Make You Go "Hmmm," on Saturday, June 23, 2018.

Edgar J. Peters, MD, PhD, will receive the Roger Pecoraro Award. He is the director of the infectious diseases fellowship program and the head of the outpatient department of internal medicine at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Peters will present the Roger Pecoraro Award Lecture: The Ghosts of Diabetic Foot Infection: Past, Present, and Yet to Come on Saturday, June 23, 2018.

The Norbert Freinkel Award is being given to Linda (Lynn) A. Barbour, MD, MSPH, FACP, who is a professor of endocrinology, metabolism, and diabetes and maternal fetal medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. She is also the medical director of the obstetrics diabetes and high-risk clinics at University Hospital in Aurora. Barbour will present the Norbert Freinkel Award Lecture, Metabolic Culprits in Obese Pregnancies and Gestational Diabetes: Big Babies, Big Twists, Big Picture on Saturday, June 23, 2018.

Finally, Alessandro Doria, MD, PhD, MPH, will receive the Edwin Bierman Award. He is the associate director of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and the senior investigator in the section on genetics and epidemiology and co-director of the molecular phenotyping and genotyping core at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Doria’s will present the Edwin Bierman Award Lecture, Leveraging Genetics to Improve Cardiovascular Health in Diabetes on Monday, June 25, 2018.

The ADA expects upwards of 16,000 professionals from around the world to attend Scientific Sessions and more than 3000 original research presentations on diabetes prevention and treatment. The 5-day event will be the largest scientific meeting that focuses on diabetes research in the world. Attendees will have the opportunity to interact with the award winners and other leading health care professionals in diabetes research and potentially earn continuing-education or continuing-medical-education credits.

More than 30 million adults and children in the United States live with diabetes, and a new patient is diagnosed every 21 seconds, according to the ADA.

The ADA strives to combat diabetes by raising awareness about the disease and educating both health care providers and patients about proper prevention and treatment.