Research Beyond Diabetes: What Is Translatable?

Abstract

This Diabetes Spectrum From Research to Practice section addresses translation as a theme. The articles focus on how intervention approaches may be applied in diabetes. The research areas address weight loss, community-based strategies for environmental change, adherence to treatment recommendations, and reducing high-risk behaviors such as smoking. The term “translation” is becoming widely used in research to address the transfer of information from one context to another. In the research continuum, knowledge acquired in bench research is applied to clinical research, and information from clinical research is in turn applied to community or applied research. Likewise, basic research in the behavioral sciences can provide information and techniques developed to address one health issue or situation that can be applicable or translatable to another health situation. Translation requires thinking broadly about how information in one area can be applied to another. Thinking narrowly about diabetes can limit potential applications of findings from other disease conditions. Early in the treatment of diabetes, the diabetic diet approach did address common concomitant conditions such as obesity, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. But diabetes was often viewed as an abnormality of carbohydrate metabolism rather than a complex metabolic syndrome that results in lipid and blood pressure abnormalities as well. Today, the emphasis of care has shifted from efforts to help patients survive acute problems to more complex self-management efforts aimed at preventing long-term diabetes complications. A similar shift has occurred with advances in the treatment and increased longevity of the HIV-infected population. Indeed, diabetes is of increasing concern for patients who are treated with protease inhibitors.1 In an era of …