Vanderbilt Diabetes Center, Tenn.
Dr. Al Powers on Diabetes Research at the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center
— -- Hello, I'm Al Powers, and I'm an Endocrinologist at Vanderbilt University. I'm the director of the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center, and I'm here today to tell you about some of the research and patient care activities going on in the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center. In the Eskind Diabetes Clinic, we provide comprehensive care to individuals who have diabetes. These include children with diabetes, adolescents who have diabetes, and adults with diabetes.
There are several unique features about the Eskind Diabetes Clinic that I wanted to mention. One, we have the combination of both pediatric endocrinologists and adult endocrinologists in the same location. This is very advantageous to our patients because this allows us to centralize all the resources that patients that have diabetes need. It also allows us to take care of adolescents as they transition from pediatric endocrinologists to adult endocrinologists. This is often a time where diabetes control deteriorates and having this seamless transition is very important for patient care.
Another important aspect of the Eskind Diabetes Clinic is we've centralized a lot of the resources that patients with diabetes have. These include ophthalmologists, nephrologists, obstetrics, and for women who have diabetes during pregnancy or who had diabetes prior to being pregnant.
We also have a number of research activities in the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center and the Eskind Diabetes Clinic. These include trials to prevent diabetes and to identify children and adults at high risk for diabetes. We're also evaluating new therapies for diabetes including medications and injections that may improve the control, especially in individuals with type 2 diabetes. We're evaluating several new technologies that allow the patient to monitor their blood glucose in a more effective and a less invasive way and thus improve their diabetes control.
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