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Making a difference for people living with diabetes: Diabetes UK‐funded publications in Diabetic Medicine between 2016 and 2019

I joined Diabetes UK as Director of Research just over 3 years ago. Diabetic Medicine has collated a virtual issue of Diabetes UK-funded research articles published in the journal over that period, which is now available through the journal website (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/ 10.1111/(ISSN)1464-5491.virtual_issue_DUK_2016-19). The invitation to review the articles included in the issue was a good opportunity to step back and consider how these new findings have progressed our charitable research strategy. We fund across all aspects of diabetes research, from basic through to clinical and translational research. All proposals are peer-reviewed internationally and are competitively funded. Our research strategy is broad, focusing on care, cure and prevention of all types of diabetes, with impact and benefit for people living with diabetes at its heart [1]. Each year approximately 200 research articles are published from our funded work, with around 2% of those being from grant-holders choosing to publish their findings in Diabetic Medicine. Over the last 3 years there have been 11 such publications in Diabetic Medicine. Four are focused on different aspects of structured education [2–5]. Two papers explore the challenges of engaging and providing accessible, useful and relevant diabetes education to help adults [2] and children [3] to manage their diabetes. Price et al. [4] trialled a new structured education programme for adolescents with type 1 diabetes called Kids In Control of Food (KICk-OFF), which demonstrated short-term improvements in quality of life but no improvement in glycaemic control. Carey et al. [5] make service improvement recommendations for the delivery of type 2 diabetes structured education based on lessons learned from the variable infrastructure provision that exists across England. Moving beyond structured education into psychological research, Farrington et al. [6] explore the psychological impact of technology during pregnancy. While automated closed-loop systems have shown positive clinical benefits for women with type 1 diabetes during pregnancy [7], this paper reports on the complex psychosocial impact of these advances in technology on people’s lives and advocates codesign approaches to maximize the benefits of these systems. The study by Speight et al. [8] reports the positive psychometric validation of a new hypoglycaemia awareness questionnaire, HypoA-Q, in adults with type 1 diabetes. These preliminary results support the potential for HypoA-Q to be used in clinical trials to identify impaired hypoglycaemia awareness. Several papers address different aspects of improving diabetes interventions. A health economic analysis of the first year of the Type 2 Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT) weight management programme compares the costs of DiRECT with those of usual care [9]. Cost–benefit analyses of new lifestyle interventions for type 2 diabetes remission are needed to provide evidence of the long-term potential cost-effectiveness of such interventions in primary care. The impact of integrating primary and specialist care through a virtual clinic model on patient outcomes in type 2 diabetes was explored in the study by Basudev et al. [10]. There was an overall improvement in glycaemic control but no significant difference between the intervention and control arms. Whether this was a systemic effect of the interactive case discussions could not be determined with this particular study design. Dietary associations with type 2 diabetes risk in children in the Child Heart and Health Study in England (CHASE) were examined by Donin et al. [11]. The possible causal link between circulating plasma vitamin C concentrations and insulin resistance in this study cohort needs further investigation. Ethnic differences in associations between type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease are compared in Eastwood et al. [12]. Prediabetes identification and association with cardiovascular risk are compared between a firstgeneration South Asian population and a European origin population in North West London. Findings suggest that stratification of people may be needed for screening and preventative interventions for type 2 diabetes across different ethnic groups based on risk of cardiovascular disease. Finally, the methodology behind the James Lind Alliance Type 2 top 10 research priorities from people living with Type 2 was published in Diabetic Medicine in 2018 [13]. This initiative was led by Diabetes UK. We will monitor progress against these research recommendations over the coming years. We hope that the research community will carefully consider these areas of unmet need that represent the views of over 2500 people living with type 2 diabetes, their carers and healthcare professionals. The overriding theme across this body of work is research that focuses on ensuring impact and benefit for people living with diabetes across all types of diabetes and all ages. This very much reflects the mission of Diabetes UK, ‘a world where diabetes can do no harm’ and indeed the goal of Diabetic Medicine, ‘improving the management of people with diabetes’. It is heartening to see that the research we have funded has advanced our understanding of how to improve the lives of people living with diabetes, whether through understanding the drivers and barriers to delivering