Children's Medical Research Institute, Chickasaws Create Diabetes Research Chair
Posted on: Wednesday, 31 August 2005, 21:01 CDT
Children's Medical Research Institute has announced a tribal partnership with the Chickasaw Nation to establish the Chickasaw Nation Endowed Research Chair in Pediatric Diabetes.
We are concerned about the alarming rate at which American Indian children are developing type 2 diabetes, said Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation. Because of the high incidence rate of diabetes in American Indians and especially Chickasaws, we feel it is our duty to support medical research that may one day lead to the prevention of this devastating disease.
The Chickasaw Nation is the 13th-largest tribe in the United States with 38,000 citizens. They opened a diabetes care center in Ada in April 2004.
The Chickasaw Nation joins the Inasmuch Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the Ruth and Paul Jonas Estate, the Trachtenberg Family, the George and Donna Nigh family, and Oklahoma Kiwanis, in creating the CMRI Pediatric Diabetes Research and Education Program, a $15 million project. Funding for Children's Medical Research Institute programs have grown 500 percent since 1999.
Partly due to these partnerships, Children's Medical Research Institute is creating a comprehensive metabolic studies research center, said Kathy McCracken, executive director of CMRI. This center is to be staffed with leading researchers performing studies and clinical trials while working with new state-of-the-art equipment.
This research center is capable of exploring diabetes from environmental, bio-medical and genetic standpoints crucial to achieving breakthrough treatments, prevention strategies and ultimately a cure for type 2 diabetes in children, McCracken said.
Oklahoma has one of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the nation, according to CMRI. The rates of this disease among American Indian children in the state may be as high as 25 percent. About one in eight American Indians have diabetes.
Tribal partnerships like the one with the Chickasaw Nation help to ensure future funding in type 2 diabetes in ethnic minorities.
In 1999, Kenneth C. Copeland was recruited to direct the OU Children's Physicians Diabetes Center. It is the only comprehensive center for pediatric diabetes in the state.
Copeland, who will serve as principal investigator of the program, is recruiting four new scientists to head the new study center. The new OU College of Medicine study center will be in the O' Donoghue Research Building.
Copeland said that the risk for type 2 diabetes can be defined years prior to its clinical presentation, and that early risk identification can be translated into highly targeted, earlier, and more aggressive intervention strategies designed to prevent this clinical disease.
Children's Medical Research Institute, founded in 1983, is the only nonprofit organization in the state of Oklahoma to provide private support exclusively for pediatric research and education.
Source: Journal Record - Oklahoma City
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