JDRF's Tom Robinson Highlights Key T1D Interventions

The Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) Index identifies 4 key interventions: timely diagnosis, insulin and strips, pumps and CGMs, and prevention and cures. Tom Robinson, vice president of global access at JDRF, goes over what steps need to be taken to implement these interventions.

Transcript

What steps need to be taken to implement the 4 key interventions identified in the T1D Index?

The priority is going to be different every country and every health system, which is a bit of a disappointing answer, but there's kind of a consistent outcomes checklist. Can we be confident that our emergency departments diagnose type 1 [diabetes] in time? That's the core of the time of diagnosis thing. Have insulin and strips been made consistently available and affordable so that people can use them? Have we looked at funding or at least subsidizing more advanced devices? Do people get coaching and support to use all of these tools effectively? Those are questions that we can ask in every country. The question then becomes, "Okay, well, which of those is most important here?" In some places it'll be, "We've got to go and intervene with the emergency department."

The example of Santé Diabète in Mali is incredible, where they went and did some training and put up posters and distributed BGMs [blood glucose meters]. The number of diagnoses almost doubled in the next few months, and certainly a year later, there were twice as many per year. Quite an extraordinary result.

But those sorts of interventions, we've seen examples of them for all 4. There are some really great impact stories on the T1D Index website, you can go and read about people who've been able to make that change happen in their country. But you really need to kind of get into the country and listen to the people there and talk to them there to figure out, "Hey, what is the 1 thing I need to do to make this thing work?"