A call for research collaboration to increase real-world impact for the diabetes community

The article was authored by a team of researchers, clinicians, and people with lived experience from the Australian Centre for Accelerating Diabetes Innovation (ACADI), including Diabetes Victoria staff and collaborators.

Together, they’re working to drive research impact.

Diabetes is complex, involving daily self-management, and affecting people’s physical, emotional, and social health and wellbeing. The article suggests that innovative solutions to drive real-world impact in diabetes are needed, and that this cannot be addressed successfully by a single academic discipline.

“Previously, we have worked with the diabetes community to understand what their research priorities are. To answer these questions, and translate findings for impact, we need to conduct interdisciplinary research,” says Dr Elizabeth Holmes-Truscott – lead author of the article, deputy director of the Australian Centre for Behavioural Research in Diabetes (a partnership between Diabetes Victoria and Deakin University), and ACADI Behavioural Platform lead.

What is interdisciplinary research?

Interdisciplinary research is defined as combining knowledge, techniques and perspectives from two or more disciplines, to advance our understanding or to solve problems where solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline.

Interdisciplinary diabetes research offers several benefits:

• Combines different areas of expertise and innovative thinking, which leads to new insights, scientific achievements and breakthroughs
• Reduces duplication, ensuring that the best approach and methods are used
• Creates efficient use of research funding to support the needs and priorities of diverse communities.

“The article represents a call to action for comprehensive interdisciplinary diabetes research to become the standard,” Dr Elizabeth Holmes-Truscott explains.

“This will accelerate diabetes innovation and see research advancements translated into ‘real-world’ community impacts.”

Shared understanding and collaboration

The article was co-authored by ACADI researchers, including ACADI Director Professor Elif Ekinci as well as project and platform leads.

ACADI itself is an interdisciplinary diabetes centre, uniting over 70 different partners. These include academic, advocacy, health service, industry and community partners.

Importantly, the authors of the article represent diverse disciplines and lived experience of different types of diabetes.

Dr Holmes-Truscott says connecting the sciences, from basic to behavioural research, with a strong focus on community involvement and implementation, will ensure diabetes interventions can be easily translated into practice and policy.

“Drug and device human research trials are strengthened by the involvement of lived experience, behavioural and implementation science expertise,” she explains.

“However, in practice, such opportunities are not being realised. For example, in the past 5 years, less than 50% of registered randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in people with type 1 and/or type 2 diabetes of all ages included person-reported outcome measures (PROMs).

“A 30-year systematic review highlighted that qualitative methods are underutilised in understanding the diabetes experience, particularly among non-clinical populations and lower income countries.”

How can the diabetes research sector promote interdisciplinary collaboration?

There are both institutional and practical barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration.

These include academic tradition, which structures research in discipline ‘silos’, reinforced by competitive research funding pathways and awards that perpetuate single discipline approaches.

Commitment and collaborative leadership from researchers, research funding bodies and publishing bodies will be critical to achieving more interdisciplinary research. 

“We can facilitate interactions and collaborations between researchers working in diverse fields through interactive diabetes conferences, funding schemes that place greater weight on interdisciplinary research and publications showcasing interdisciplinary research approaches to solve complex challenges in diabetes prevention, care and management,” Dr Holmes-Truscott says.

“There also needs to be multiple pathways and greater support systems that appropriately resource interdisciplinary collaboration, including employment frameworks, resources and training.

“Incremental change must be encouraged to realise and benefit from interdisciplinary diabetes research as the standard approach. An important first step is for diabetes researchers, of all disciplines, to consider ‘who’ has a seat at their diabetes research table.”

Our commitment

The Diabetes Victoria 2024-2030 Strategic Plan outlines our research goal: more people will benefit from research breakthroughs to prevent, manage, or cure diabetes. At Diabetes Victoria, we are proud to support interdisciplinary diabetes research. In February we announced a 10-year funding commitment to support ACADI’s impactful diabetes research.

This year we also celebrate 15 years of partnership with Deakin University, funding the Australian Centre for Behavioural Research in Diabetes.

Read the full article in Diabetic Medicine here.