I-TrainED: Innovative Training and Education in Diabetes - The main objective of this NIH/NIDDK K26 is to recruit, retain, and mentor trainees into research career pathways that will ultimately help support our nation's biomedical and behavioral workforce goal of increasing the pipeline of diabetes researchers. Trainees under this award will include doctoral-level (graduate students) and post-doctoral (fellows) researchers who have an interest in children's type 1 diabetes (T1D) self-management, adherence promotion and glycemic control, and family-based self-care. Mentorship will take place at Children’s National Hospital (CNH), the largest and only exclusive provider of pediatric training and pediatric patient care in the greater Washington, DC region. CNH's location in the nation's capital means it has access to many nearby degree- granting universities and/or institutions of higher learning that are part of a research training network. This opportunity will provide trainees clinical-translational research training under the mentorship of a recognized and dedicated researcher, with a well-established track record of extramural funding in T1D research who has mentored a cadre of successful students, interns, fellows, and early-stage investigators. The mentor (Randi Streisand, PhD, CDCES) is an expert in children's health behavior theory and research methods, the science of behavior change, and their application to T1D adherence promotion and the prevention and control of T1D complications in childhood. Mentees will be sought from the fields of medicine, nursing, epidemiology and community/public health, pharmacy, health services research, and social/behavioral sciences. CNH's exceptional core training, research, and administrative facilities, along with those of our academic affiliate (at The George Washington University), will be leveraged to accelerate the tempo of mentees' experiences in the field of T1D research. Mentees will participate in a series of structured, didactic, and skill-building experiences. This training will be customized through individual learning plans, arranged by and with Dr. Streisand and multidisciplinary team members, that will deepen and enrich the mentees’ overall research experience. This mentoring relationship holds the potential to favorably alter the future research career trajectories of individuallys within the behavioral diabetes research workforce to improve clinical and public health outcomes.
