Latest news with #DiabetesPreventionProgram
New York Times
07-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
As Kennedy Champions Chronic Disease Prevention, Key Research Is Cut
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an 'existential threat' that he said can destroy the nation. 'We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,' Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services. And on Monday he is starting a tour in the Southwest to promote a program to combat chronic illness, emphasizing nutrition and lifestyle. But since Mr. Kennedy assumed his post, key grants and contracts that directly address these diseases, including obesity, diabetes and dementia, which experts agree are among the nation's leading health problems, are being eliminated. These programs range in scale and expense. Researchers warn that their demise could mean lost opportunities to address an aspect of public health that Mr. Kennedy has said is his priority. 'This is a huge mistake,' said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Ever since its start in 1996, the Diabetes Prevention Program has helped doctors understand this deadly chronic disease. The condition is the nation's most expensive, affecting 38 million Americans and incurring $306 billion in one recent year in direct costs. With about 400,000 deaths in 2021, it was the eighth leading cause of death. The program has been terminated, and the reason has little to do with its merits. Instead, it seems to be a matter of a lead researcher's working in the wrong place at the wrong time. The program began when doctors at 27 medical centers received funding from the National Institutes of Health for a study asking whether Type 2 diabetes could be prevented. The 3,234 participants had high risk of the disease. The results were a huge victory. Those assigned to follow a healthy diet and exercise routine regularly reduced their chances of developing diabetes by 58 percent. Those who took metformin, a drug that lowers blood sugar, decreased their risk by 31 percent. The program entered a new phase, led by Dr. David M. Nathan, a diabetes expert at Harvard Medical School. Researchers followed the participants to see how they fared without the constant attention and support of a clinical trial. The researchers also examined their genetics and metabolism and looked at measures of frailty and cognitive function. Several years ago, the investigators had an idea. Some studies suggested that people with diabetes had a higher risk of dementia. But scientists didn't know if it was vascular dementia or Alzheimer's or what the precise risk factors were. The diabetes program could renew its focus on investigating this with its 1,700 aging participants. The group added a new principal investigator, the dementia expert Dr. Jose A. Luchsinger. For administrative reasons, including the newfound focus on dementia, the program decided its money should flow through Dr. Luchsinger's home institution, Columbia University, rather than through Harvard or George Washington University, where a third principal investigator works. On March 7, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, saying Jewish students were not protected from harassment during protests over the war in Gaza. The diabetes grant was among those terminated: $16 million a year that Columbia shared across 30 medical centers. The study ended abruptly. Asked about the termination, Andrew G. Nixon, director of communications at Health and Human Services, provided a statement from the agency's acting general counsel saying that 'anti-Semitism is clearly inconsistent with the fundamental values that should inform liberal education' and that 'Columbia University's complacency is unacceptable.' At the time their grant ended, the researchers had started advanced cognitive testing for evidence of dementia in patients, followed by brain imaging to look for amyloid, the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. They planned to complete the tests during the next two years. Then, Dr. Luchsinger said, the group was going to look at blood biomarkers of amyloid and other signs of dementia, including brain inflammation. For comparison, they planned to perform the same tests on participants' blood samples from 7 and 15 years ago. 'Very few studies have blood collected and stored going that far back,' Dr. Luchsinger said. Now much of the work cannot begin, and the part that had started remains incomplete. Another troubling question the researchers hoped to answer was whether metformin increases, decreases or has no effect on the risk of dementia. 'This is the largest and longest study of metformin ever,' Dr. Luchsinger said. Participants assigned to take the drug in the 1990s took it for more than 20 years. 'We thought we had the potential to put to rest this question about metformin,' Dr. Luchsinger said. The only ways to save the program, Dr. Nathan said, are for Mr. Kennedy to agree to restore the funding at Columbia or to transfer the grant to a principal investigator at another medical center. The study investigators are appealing to the diabetes caucus in Congress, hoping it can help make their case to the Health and Human Services. 'We hope the congressmen and senators might prevail and say: 'This is crazy. This is chronic disease. This is what you wanted to study,'' Dr. Nathan said. So far, there has been no change. Compared with the Diabetes Prevention Program, a program to train pediatricians to become scientists is tiny. But pediatric researchers say that the Pediatric Scientist Development Program helps ensure that chronic childhood diseases are included in medical research. It began 40 years ago when chairs of pediatric departments called for the creation of the program, which has been continually funded ever since by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Participants are clinicians who were trained in subspecialties like endocrinology and nephrology, practiced as clinicians and were inspired to go into research to help young patients with the diseases they had seen firsthand. The highly competitive program pays for seven to eight pediatricians to train at university medical centers for a year, pairing them with mentors and giving them time away from the clinic to research conditions including obesity, asthma and chronic kidney disease. In retrospect, the program's fate was sealed in 2021 when its leaders applied for a renewal of their grant. It seemed pro forma. This was its eighth renewal. This time, though, an external committee of grant reviewers told the investigators their proposal's biggest weakness was a lack of diversity. The program needed to seek pediatricians who represented diverse ethnicities, economic backgrounds, states, types of research and pediatric specialties. The critique said, for example, that 'attention must be given to recruiting applicants from diverse backgrounds, including from groups that have been shown to be nationally underrepresented in the biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences.' So the program's leaders sprinkled diversity liberally through a rewritten grant application. 'Diversity, in its broadest sense, was all over the grant,' said Dr. Sallie Permar, professor and chairwoman of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the program. 'It was exactly what the reviewers appreciated when we resubmitted.' The grant was renewed in 2023. Now it is terminated. The reason? Diversity. The termination letter, from officials in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said there was no point in trying to rewrite the grant request. The inclusion of diversity made the application so out of line that 'no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities.' Mr. Nixon, the health department spokesman, did not reply to queries about the pediatric program's cancellation. Participants in the program are distraught. Dr. Sean Michael Cullen had been studying childhood obesity at Weill Cornell in New York. He has investigated why male mice fed a high-fat diet produced offspring that became fat, even when those offspring were fed a standard diet. He hoped his findings would help predict in humans which children were at risk of obesity so pediatricians could try to intervene. Now the funds are gone. He may seek private or philanthropic funding, but he doesn't have any clear prospects. Dr. Evan Rajadhyaksha is in a similar situation. He's a childhood kidney disease specialist at Indiana University. When he was a resident, he cared for a little girl who developed kidney disease because of a condition in which some urine washes up from the bladder into the kidneys. Dr. Rajadhyaksha has a hypothesis that vitamin D supplementation could protect children with this condition. Now, that work has to stop. Without funding, he expects to leave research and return to clinical work. Dr. Permar said she hadn't given up. The program costs only $1.5 million each year, so she and her colleagues are looking for other support. 'We are asking foundations,' she said. 'We are starting to ask industry — we haven't had industry funding before. We are asking department chairs and children's hospitals, are they willing to fund-raise?' 'We are literally looking under every couch cushion,' Dr. Permar said. 'But,' she said, federal support for the program 'has been the foundation and cannot be supplanted.'
Chicago Tribune
30-03-2025
- Health
- Chicago Tribune
Community news: Compost site opens; virtual diabetes program offered; Earth Day celebration
Porter County compost sites open for the season The Recycling and Waste Reduction District of Porter County's compost sites have all reopened for the season. Both the Boone Grove site, 546 South 400 West, Valparaiso, and the Portage site, 6451 U.S. Highway 12, Portage, are open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday; the Valparaiso compost site, 2150 W. Lincolnway, is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For more information on accepted items and site-specific details, visit or contact info@ Franciscan Health offering virtual Diabetes Prevention Program Franciscan Health will be hosting a virtual Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) series starting at 5 p.m. April 8. The program follows guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have been proven to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes. Groups meet weekly for a total of 16 sessions, prior to six monthly follow-up sessions with a trained lifestyle coach. Throughout the program, participants work with a certified healthy lifestyle coach who guides them in practices to lose weight, move more, reduce stress and build confidence. The program is open to participants ages 18 and older who have been diagnosed with prediabetes, not those who have previously been diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Participants must have a body mass index greater than 25. Those who had a previous diagnosis of gestational diabetes or a screening result indicating a high risk of type 2 diabetes also are eligible to participate. The year-long program costs $99 and is covered for approved Medicare beneficiaries. Registration is required and space is limited. To register, complete the DPP Qualifying Questionnaire online at Those with questions are asked to register for the Virtual Q&A Session at Planet Palooza annual Earth Day celebration Join Brown Faces Green Spaces for their Sixth Annual Earth Day Planet Palooza from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. April 12 at Marquette Park, 1 North Grand Blvd., Gary. This year's event, 'Boots on the Ground: A Reclamation of Earth, Health and Self,' focuses on the importance of our health and mental wellness as we care for the air, land and water around us in our everyday lives. This family-friendly, outdoor celebration features more than 20 interactive eco-education stations and is free and open to all. The day will begin with a shoreline cleanup at 10 a.m. along Marquette Beach. Sign-in begins at 9:15 a.m. at Shelter No. 2. Refreshments will be provided. Register to participate at To become a sponsor or for more information, visit or email Kimmie Gordon at brownfacesgreenspaces@ Webinar on 'Growing Vegetables in Small Places' Join the Lake County Master Gardeners as they present a free webinar at 6 p.m. April 15 on 'Growing Vegetables in Small Spaces.' Presented by author, plant enthusiast and artist, C.L. Fornari, participants will learn how to make the most of the space they have, from raised beds and Smart Pots to incorporating vegetables in existing landscapes, and which vegetables offer the longest periods of harvest. A columnist for Garden Center Magazine, Fornari also has written for Angie's List Magazine, Prime Time Magazine, Fine Gardening, Coastal Home, Country Gardens and American Nurseryman. Visit to reserve a space. Ian Munsick to headline Hometown Jams concert Hometown Jams will present country music sensation Ian Munsick May 29 at Central Park Plaza, Northwest Health Amphitheater, 68 Lafayette St., Valparaiso. Gates will open at 5 p.m. Known for his distinctive Western sound and rich storytelling, Ian Munsick has captured the hearts of country music fans nationwide. Fans looking for a premium experience can take advantage of VIP Tables, offering exclusive seating and perks. The event will include a variety of food and beverage vendors and interactive experiences. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit
CBS News
26-03-2025
- Health
- CBS News
YMCA of Metro Denver changing lives with health classes, diabetes prevention program
According to the American Diabetes Association, there are 1,444,000 Coloradans with prediabetes, which means their blood sugar is higher than recommended and they're verging on developing Type 2 diabetes. The YMCA of Metro Denver offers a Diabetes Prevention Program as part of its Health Initiatives. "The Diabetes Prevention Program is a year-long program that is basically offered to people who are diagnosed with pre-diabetes," said Hazel Urbaniak, a Lifestyle Coach with YMCA. The classes are in-person, and throughout the year, participants get the opportunity to break down their eating and exercise habits and rebuild them. "They get a lot of guidance on their nutrition, the importance of moving, just getting more exercise in general," Urbaniak explained. "Movement has a lot of benefits just in terms of chemical releases in the brain. It helps to lower pressure." Another of the YMCA Health Initiative classes is Blood Pressure Monitoring. "It's a one-on-one coaching that we do with people. They help monitor their blood pressure and make sure that they understand what causes those triggers to go up," Urbaniak said. Alice Dent struggled with high blood pressure and prediabetes. She suffered a sudden disability that forced her to retire from work and left her adrift. "As a senior or a person with disability, I started to feel less than myself," she told CBS News Colorado. She also started to eat more, causing her to put on weight, which raised her blood sugar and her blood pressure. "My blood pressure was a roller coaster, constantly," she explained. Dent found the YMCA Blood Pressure Monitoring Program. She learned all the factors that cause your blood pressure to go up and down. "You have to know that your emotional state, what you allow into your mind and heart, causes a lot of that fluctuation," she explained. She went right from Blood Pressure Monitoring to the Diabetes Prevention Program, where she got even more in-depth guidance on nutrition and exercise. "Mindful eating and to pay attention to my food intake, and how important is was to actually eat vegetables and more fruits," she said about what she learned in the class. Dent took all the lessons to heart and added in the Silver Sneakers exercise class three days a week as the foundation for a new, healthier lifestyle. Silver Sneakers is an exercise class for older YMCA members which includes cardio, light weight lifting, and stretching. It's all set to music which Dent said she loves the best. "I'm happier now than I have been in a really, really long time," she said. YMCA DIABETES PREVENTION PROGRAM Upcoming sessions: Arvada YMCA: Thursdays | 12 – 1 p.m. | Starting Mar. 27 *Classes available in English and Spanish. Insurance coverage and financial assistance available. BLOOD PRESSURE SELF-MONITORING PROGRAM Offered virtually and at multiple locations throughout Denver metro area FREE program. Rolling enrollment. SILVER SNEAKERS PROGRAMMING – Special membership options and older adult programming available at all locations.
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A cure for her daughter's epilepsy was getting close. Then Trump froze health spending.
Anne Morgan Giroux is pretty sure the cure for epilepsy ‒ or at least a long-term solution for millions ‒ is sitting in a university lab in Madison, Wisconsin. She and a team of researchers need just $3.3 million to push it across the finish line. The problem: That $3.3 million solution is on indefinite hold as President Donald Trump and his administration slashes government spending. The money would have been awarded as grants from the National Institutes of Health to launch human trials. Epilepsy affects about 1% of U.S. adults, or around 3 million people. The halt in that epilepsy research is a story being repeated thousands of times nationally as university scientists face the loss of federal funding under new Trump priorities. The cuts will make the country sicker and poorer as healthcare costs rise without new treatments for obesity, diabetes, cancer, autism and aging, among many other diseases, researchers, patients, family members and entrepreneurs have told USA TODAY. The NIH is the world's largest funder of medical research, accounting for about 1% of the overall federal budget. "When you have a kid with epilepsy and you see that this kind of Holy Grail, this potential treatment is sitting there within grasp but yet now unattainable, it's frustrating," said Giroux. "We're so close to a finish line, and to have the research just sitting there is unbearable." Giroux's now-adult daughter was born with epilepsy, and with the help of annual community luaus, her family helped raise more than $1 million to pay for the initial experimental research that put scientists onto the trail of this new treatment. Avtar Roopra, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who runs the lab developing that treatment, said many breakthroughs happen because funders like Giroux foot the bill for highly experimental work, which then demonstrates enough success to earn NIH funding. "With these cuts, that pipeline is going to be severed at the university level," he said. "Companies are not going to take on the risk of decades-long research without a financial return." Roopra said he worries that a funding delay of even a few months will prompt his research assistants and lab manager to seek new jobs, costing the Roopra Lab decades of experience and expertise. A federal judge earlier this month blocked the Trump administration from cutting NIH funding, but researchers say the money has not yet begun flowing again. "Even if we get a whole new crop of people next year, we will have lost decades of generational knowledge," Roopra said. Trump has halted some existing research funding administered by universities, while Congress is considering long-term cuts to National Institutes of Health grants, which typically fund about $48 billion worth of research annually at 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions. Dr. William Hsu, a longtime Harvard Medical School professor, said a Trump cut halted the long-running Diabetes Prevention Program, which first revealed how changes to diet and exercise can play a significant role in staving off diabetes, and then helped Americans make those changes. The DPP was administered in recent years by Columbia University, which has seen a $400 million research cut from the Trump administration. The DPP program cost about about $80 million annually, but was estimated to save about $20 billion each year in diabetes-related costs, according to Congressional budget writers. The American Diabetes Association estimates that people diagnosed with diabetes now account for 25% of all healthcare spending in the United States annually. Hsu said he worries the loss of prevention programs means patients will instead be encouraged to take prescription drugs. "Prevention is one of those areas where we should do more, not less," said Hsu, now the chief medical officer of Boston-based L-Nutra Health, a lifestyle-medicine company. Many researchers fear that Trump and his allies are cutting research funding in the mistaken belief private companies or venture capitalists will fill the void. The reality, they say, is that private industry and venture capitalists only show up once there's a near-viable product to sell. "Pharma, industry, Tesla, they don't do this," said University of California San Diego Prof. Jonathan Sebat, an international leader in studying how genetics affects mental health. "They rely on the basic science funded by the NIH." Sebat said research cuts will likely cause Americans to miss out on treatments and cures that take decades to develop, such as GLP-1 diabetes and weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, which are currently being used by at least 6% of the U.S. population. Ozempic was developed through dozens of clinical research trials dating back 30 years, and traces its origins to NIH-funded studies on how yeasts consume sugar on grapes. Sebat's lab studies causes and treatments for the genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. "There's no such thing as short term in this business," said Sebat. "If you stop (research) or even cut it, you're having long-term effects on our health care, on every aspect of our health care pipeline." Many conservatives criticize the NIH for having close ties to pharmaceutical companies, and for creating a funding system in which government scientists decide the nation's research priorities. Other critics argue NIH is too "woke," or hasn't done enough to study the potential negative impacts of abortion and gender-affirming care. A conservative blueprint for remaking the federal government, Project 2025, calls for dramatic changes to the NIH, including having states decide what research to fund, which the plan's authors said would create greater transparency and accountability. "Despite its popular image as a benign science agency, NIH was responsible for paying for research in aborted baby body parts, human-animal chimera experiments, and gain-of-function viral research that may have been responsible for COVID-19," Project 2025 said of the NIH. Vik Bajaj, a California-based venture capitalist and CEO of a lab using AI to develop new medicines, said he's open to the possibility that Trump's cuts will ultimately sharpen research focus and reduce bureaucratic overhead. But he worries about the impacts to what's called "blue sky" research ‒ work that doesn't have obvious, immediate real-world implications, but that has led to advances like the internet and cell phones. He noted that China has copied the American model of pumping huge amounts of funding into a wide array of research projects, on the belief it will eventually pay off, adding to human knowledge on everything from the tiniest cell to the most distant objects in the universe. "Everything we care about, the complex systems upon which our lives depend … all have their genesis in academic research," said Bajaj, the CEO of Foresite Labs, and managing director at Foresite Capital, an investment firm that funds biotech-and-big-data companies. Sebat, Roopra and Giroux said they all understand that federal research dollars should be spent wisely, and welcomed appropriate oversight. But they said there has to be a better way than wholesale cuts. Essentially halting NIH funding, Giroux said, seems like a foolish approach: "If you're upset about people speeding down the interstate, you don't simply close the highway." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Federal spending cuts jeopardize decades of medical advances
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump administration cuts funding to long-term diabetes study: Report
The Trump administration has reportedly canceled funding to an ongoing, three-decade study tracking patients with diabetes, despite Donald Trump's campaign promise to 'Make America Healthy Again' and fight chronic disease. The cuts were made via the National Institutes of Health, which pulled funding for the Diabetes Prevention Program, researchers told Stat News. The scientists don't know why the funding was cut, but speculated it might be because Columbia University helps administer funding for the study to research institutions across the country. The Trump administration recently pulled $400 million in federal funding from Columbia, alleging the Ivy League school hadn't done enough to stop antisemitism on campus. The Independent has contacted the agency for comment. The National Institutes of Health, which handed out $35 billion in grants last year, has been hit with multiple cuts since Trump took office, including more than 1,000 employees who were eliminated, as well as individual grants that were canceled because they involved aspects of now-banned diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The White House has also directed the institutes to dramatically reduce funding for existing grants, too, though that effort was blocked in federal court earlier this month in a lawsuit from 22 states and organizations representing universities and hospitals. The changes at the health agency have prompted universities to freeze hiring, and some aspiring scientists have been unable to pursue prevision positions funded by the institutes. 'You don't take these jobs that pay worse and have insane hours and are really stressful unless you care about helping others and taking our love for science and translating that into something that can improve people's lives,' Connor Phillips, who was interviewing at Brown University for a program researching cerebral palsy, told The Associated Press. The administration is eyeing changes that could have even more sweeping impacts on the nation's health. White House adviser and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk frequently refers to Social Security as a 'Ponzi scheme,' and was considering ending the program's phone-based services to seniors, before later reportedly abandoning the effort amid media scrutiny.
