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An Australian visiting professor wants to improve diabetes prevention in Denmark by making existing but insufficiently used information more widely known for the benefit of people who have diabetes, those who are on the way to getting it – and everyone else.

Many cases of type 2 diabetes and obesity can be prevented by eating healthily, not smoking and getting more exercise. This is common knowledge, but even so, far too many people become overweight, and far too many get type 2 diabetes.

It wouldn’t need to be like this if the knowledge of prevention that has already been successfully developed were spread more widely and reached more population groups.

‘If the knowledge we already have were more widely integrated into practice and disseminated to the public, it would result in improved practice in clinics and municipalities, thereby benefiting people with diabetes, people at risk of diabetes and the general public all round. Unfortunately, it happens all too often that good knowledge is not integrated into practice, and that’s a major public health challenge’, says Australian professor Adrian Bauman of the University of Sydney.

He has now received a grant from the Danish Diabetes Academy so that he can take up the challenge together with his host Charlotte Demant Klinker, a senior researcher and team leader at the Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen.

Across Denmark and across institutional boundaries

As a visiting professor, Adrian Baumann will collaborate with several of the country’s leading prevention researchers on a number of specific research projects. The aim is to enhance the use of methods that can help to spread and support the implementation of effective preventive measures. This means both preventing diabetes and obesity in the general population, and prevention among people who already have diabetes or are at imminent risk of developing it.

As part of his visiting professorship, he will also give a number of short courses on how research can be translated and implemented in practice on a large scale in Denmark.

‘In some areas, we have less need for more new studies: our knowledge is good enough already. What we need is for the knowledge to get out there and live, and we have good experience of making that happen in Australia. My goal is to help to scale up what we know works and implement it more widely in the Danish population, so that Danes get the benefit of the knowledge that has already been developed’, says Adrian Bauman.

Already collaborating with Danish diabetes researchers

Adrian Bauman knows the Danish research community exceptionally well, because he already has a broad collaboration on the go with Danish diabetes researchers and the Danish prevention community. Adrian Bauman will be based at the Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, but as part of his visiting professorship he will visit and collaborate with diabetes and prevention centres throughout the country, and he will work with actors from both research and practice.

Facts

Name and title: Professor Adrian Baumann, University of Sidney, Australia

Awarded DKK 225,000 by the Danish Diabetes Academy.

Project title: Enhancing methods for scale up in diabetes prevention.

Research centre: Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen

Host: Charlotte Demant Klinker, senior researcher & team leader

Email: adrian.bauman@sydney.edu.au

Mobile: +61 417263483

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Contact Danish Diabetes Academy

Tore Christiansen, Managing Director

Email: tore.christiansen@rsyd.dk

Tel: +45 2964 6764