Our Partners and Projects
Partners Map

Together on Diabetes™ seeks to draw on the strengths of communities and support traditional and non-traditional public and private-sector partners coming together, collaboratively developing and expanding effective patient self-management programs, and broadly engaging and mobilizing affected communities in the fight against type 2 diabetes.

Together on Diabetes™ partners and projects:

  • American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, in partnership with Peers for Progress, National Council of La Raza and the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, will receive $5,234,876 over 3 years to incorporate patient self-management education, peer support and community outreach for low-income Hispanics and African Americans into the patient-centered medical home model. Project Leader: Edwin Fisher. (read more >>)
  • American Association of Diabetes Educators will receive $400,000 for a 12 month pilot study of the effectiveness and sustainability of a flexible, multi-level diabetes education and support team that serves minority populations and that utilizes professional and lay health workers. Project Leader: Ruth Lipman. (read more >>)
  • American Pharmacists Association Foundation, working with government agencies, professional associations, pharmacy chains and others, will receive $4,384,210 after 4 years to adapt and expand the evidence-based Asheville Project model to patients covered by public and private health insurance in 25 communities heavily affected by diabetes. In this model, patients receive diabetes education and then are teamed with community-based pharmacists who make sure they use their medications correctly. Project Leader: Benjamin Bluml. (read more >>)
  • The Camden (N.J.) Coalition of Healthcare Providers and the Cooper Foundation will receive $3.45 million over five years to strengthen community-based components of its Camden Citywide Diabetes Collaborative care model by focusing on patient self-management, education and support, care coordination, food access and physical activity programs, and behavioral health and community engagement activities in order to bend the curve on the diabetes burden and health care costs in the city. Project Leader: Nadia Ali. (read more >>)
  • Duke University Medical Center and the Durham County (N.C.) Department of Health and Human Services will receive $6.25 million over five years to develop, pilot and implement a series of community-based interventions designed to improve diabetes self-management, health outcomes and quality of life for diagnosed and undiagnosed adults with type 2 diabetes, while also reducing disparities based on race, age, gender, socioeconomic status, or insurance status. Project Leader: Michelle Lyn. (read more >>)
  • Feeding America, in partnership with three member food banks in Texas, Ohio and California, will receive $3.1 million over three years to create and pilot bi-directional food bank-health center partnerships that will provide diabetes screening, care coordination, nutrition and disease education, and healthy foods to adults who are living with type 2 diabetes and food insecure. Project Leader: Kim Prendergast. (read more >>)
  • Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation will receive $981,862 over four years to develop comprehensive state-level policy recommendations for eliminating barriers to care, improving outcomes and enhancing health care policy for patients with type 2 diabetes as part of the Center’s Providing Access to Healthy Solutions initiative. Project Leader: Robert Greenwald. (read more >>)
  • Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health will receive $2.25 million over two years to work intensively with four Southwestern tribal communities to pioneer public health innovations by identifying and filling gaps in diabetes prevention and care, encouraging and supporting healthy behavior changes, helping patients self-manage their disease and navigate care systems, and by building and coordinating medical, non-medical and policy efforts at the community level. American Indians and Alaska natives suffer the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the nation – as high as one in three in the Navajo and Apache communities this initiative will target. Project Leader: Allison Barlow. (read more >>)
  • Marshall University Center for Rural Health, in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Appalachian Regional Commission, will receive $2.61 million over five years to build the capacity of 10 community diabetes coalitions to implement evidence-based programs that support long-term behavior change and improve the health of people living with type 2 diabetes. Project Leader: Richard Crespo. (read more >>)
  • The Mississippi Public Health Institute, in partnership with the Mississippi Department of Health, University of Mississippi Medical Center and the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, will receive $504,000 to develop a coordinated, evidence-based, community approach to systematically lower the incidence and severity of diabetes in 18 Delta Region counties by integrating existing medical and non-medical systems of care, supporting the creation of patient-centered medical homes and developing policies that positively impact environmental and social determinants of health related to 2 diabetes. Project Leader: Ellen Jones. (read more >>)
  • Morehouse School of Medicine / Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation Partnership for Health Equity in Diabetes based at the Morehouse School of Medicine’s National Center for Primary Care is a 5 year $2,172,981 collaboration to maximize national impact of Together on Diabetes by achieving replicability, sustainability, and scalability. The National Center for Primary Care will leverage their extensive relationships with the primary care and health equity communities to disseminate and scale successful models and lessons learned from Together on Diabetes projects. (read more >>)
  • National Council on Aging will receive $4.87 million over three years to demonstrate a nationally scalable model for delivering the Stanford DSMP on-line and in community settings in partnership with the national YMCA-USA, OASIS Institute, WellPoint and Stanford University. Project Leader: James Firman. (read more >>)
  • National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) (NNPHI) will receive $180,144 to develop and host a two-day summit in the first quarter of 2012 and support a the Learning Collaborative for Together on Diabetes® grantees. NNPHI also will leverage its expertise and network to inform the annual summit and learning community activities, provide leadership and professional development opportunities for Together on Diabetes® grantees, and enhance relationships between Together on Diabetes® grantees and the broader public health practice community. Project Leader: Christopher Kinabrew. (read more >>)
  • Sixteenth Street Community Health Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will receive $295,615 over three years to help Hispanic patients with type 2 diabetes who have fallen out of a doctor’s care for their diabetes at least twice in a 12-month period to reconnect to care, drawing lessons on linkage to care models used for people living with HIV/AIDS. Project Leader: Wina Zorro. (read more >>)
  • United Hospital Fund will receive $2,845,967 over three years and work with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department for the Aging to develop and test an integrated, community-based diabetes control strategy for seniors living in “naturally occurring retirement communities and the surrounding neighborhoods.” Project Leader: Fredda Vladeck. (read more >>)
  • University of Kansas received $2,885,944 over five years to develop and implement an online documentation and support system that will help the Foundation evaluate and understand what is being accomplished by Together on Diabetes™ at the individual project and overall initiative levels, while also helping to improve the individual and collective performance of Together on Diabetes™ grantees and their projects. Project Leader: Jerry Schultz. (read more >>)

Focus on African American Women Grantees

African American women represent one of the highest-risk groups of type 2 diabetes in terms of prevalence and disease burden. In November 2010, Together on Diabetes issued a special request for proposals to encourage, identify and promote new and evidence-based approaches to empowering African American women to control their diabetes while taking into account the opportunity they have to impact the health of their families and communities. Each of the following organizations received two-year $300,000 grants:

  • Black Women's Health Imperative working with clinical and faith-based partners, received a grant to implement a comprehensive self-management, social support and empowerment program for African American women age 40 and older and their families living in three wards in the District of Columbia. Project Leader: Valerie Rochester. (read more >>)
  • East Carolina University received a grant to implement a behaviorally centered "small changes" approach and care navigation delivered by lay health worker teams in four rural communities in eastern North Carolina. Project Leader: Doyle Cummings. (read more >>)
  • United Neighborhood Health Services received a grant to implement a comprehensive diabetes self-management program including a robust physical activity component which spans the clinical team to the development of community resources in Nashville, Tennessee. Project Leader: Nancy Mason. (read more >>)
  • University of Virginia received a grant to undertake a comparative study to evaluate the effectiveness of the Call to Health model which includes supportive text messaging, “buddies,” group visits in clinic and community-based settings and community resource referral and mobilization in partnership with the Charlottesville-Albemarle Community Obesity Task Force. Project Leader: Mohan Nadkarni. (read more >>)
  • Whittier Street Health Center working with the Boston Housing Authority and Boston YMCA, received a grant to connect African-American women living in public housing with comprehensive diabetes management, including health education and support by a certified diabetes educator and peer supporter, nutritional counseling by a dietitian, social service navigation, and a tailored program for physical activity in Roxbury. Project Leader: Patrick Healy. (read more >>)

Together on Diabetes™ Expands to China and India

In May 2012, Together on Diabetes™ announced a $15 million, five-year expansion to China and India, developing nations with rapidly growing numbers of type 2 diabetes patients.

The International Diabetes Foundation (IDF) reports that more than 90 million people in China – 9.3 percent of the population – had type 2 diabetes in 2011, the most of any country. That figure is projected to grow to 129.7 million, or 12.1 percent of the population, by 2030.

India, which has 61.26 million people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (8.3 percent of the population), ranks second only to China in total cases and third behind the United States (10.9 percent) and China in terms of prevalence. By 2030, India will have 101.2 million people with type 2 diabetes, IDF projects.

The additional commitment for Together on Diabetes™ builds upon the work of the Foundation’s Delivering Hope™ initiative to address hepatitis B and C in Asia. Like Delivering Hope™, Together on Diabetes™ will work with partners in China and India to reduce health disparities and fight serious diseases by strengthening community-based health care worker capacity and integrating medical care and community-based supportive services.

The initial partners of Together on Diabetes™ in China are:

  • Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention will receive US $709,016 over three years to enhance the capacity of rural health care providers to manage and prevent type 2 diabetes at the village level in Western China, where diabetes is growing faster than in China’s cities and where rising medical costs are an important factor leading to poverty. (read more >>)
  • Shanghai Charity Foundation will receive US $522,797 over three years to create an efficient and effective community-based, block-by-block approach for managing type 2 diabetes in Shanghai, a mega-city of 23 million people.
    (read more >>)

The initial partners of Together on Diabetes™ in India are:

  • Mamta Health Institute for Mother and Child received US $706,995 over three years to pilot a study to determine the feasibility of involving India’s lay community health workers (Accredited Social Health Activists) and integrating various systems of medicine, including modern and AYUSH, to prevent and control non-communicable diseases, especially type 2 diabetes. Project Leader: Sunil Mehra. (read more >>)
  • All India Institute of Diabetes and Research and Swasthya Diabetes Hospital received US $465,685 over two years to develop and test a three-setting model to improve access to diabetes education, prevention and care for the poor in rural, tribal and urban settings in Gujarat. Project Leader: Mayer Patel. (read more >>)
  • Sanjivani Health and Relief Committee received US $426,374 over four years to conduct a household-by-household study in 348 villages to identify type 2 diabetes and ensure early diagnosis of undetected diabetes among those with pre-diabetes or at high risk of developing diabetes. The study also will determine the prevalence of type 2 diabetes and related complications among the rural poor. Project Leader: Pankaj Shah. (read more >>)