Moving the Needle on Diabetes

Trustee Support Fuels New Approach in Diabetes Care

By Robyn Murray

Diabetes prevention and management is, in theory, relatively straightforward. It comes down to healthy eating, exercise, taking medication as prescribed and self-monitoring at home. But, in practice, those simple steps can be extremely challenging.

“It’s a disease of detail,” said Timothy Wahl, M.D., a retired endocrinologist, University of Nebraska Medical Center alumnus and University of Nebraska Foundation Trustee. “You need to pay attention to many things. It’s with you 24 hours a day, which wears on people.”

Despite numerous advances in diabetes prevention and treatment, control of the disease has not significantly improved. Today in the U.S., 34 million people have diabetes, and 88 million adults — that is one in three — have prediabetes. Yet, only about one in four U.S. adults with diabetes are successfully managing their disease, and 90% of those with prediabetes do not know they have the condition, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rural communities are particularly hard hit.

Thanks to a $7 million gift from the Diabetes Care Foundation, which Wahl co-founded, UNMC and Nebraska Medicine launched an initiative in fall 2022 to change that. A pilot program called Diabetes On Track was rolled out in Wayne and Hastings. It aimed at helping communities tailor their own solutions and bringing together health departments, clinics, hospitals and community groups to find solutions that worked.

Diabetes On Track was featured in Diabetes Spectrum, a journal published by the American Diabetes Association, as showing promising results. The journal lauded the initiative for allowing primary care clinics to use community knowledge to redesign how diabetes care is delivered.

“The project shows the needle can be moved,” said Andjela Drincic, M.D., professor of diabetes, endocrinology and metabolism at UNMC, who has been named the Dr. Timothy Wahl Presidential Chair of Diabetes Education, Care and Research, a position made possible through the generosity of the Diabetes Care Foundation.

Drincic is the inaugural director of a new multi-college initiative at UNMC, the Diabetes Center of Excellence in Diabetes Care, Research and Education, which aims to take the success of the Diabetes On Track program statewide. Drincic plans to connect and coordinate the university system’s various diabetes research, education and outreach efforts into a focused, impactful force that reaches all Nebraskans.

Wahl believes that kind of collaborative approach is what’s needed to tackle diabetes.

“Currently, it takes about 14 years for an advance in diabetes care to go from discovery to becoming a routine tool,” Wahl said. “I want to improve that communication and education as much as we can to advance the care of the diabetic community as quickly as possible.”

As a trustee and advocate for the university, Wahl served not only as a generous benefactor but also as a connector who brought other donors to the table. At a recent event, Wahl thanked the foundation for helping to turn his gift into action.

“I don’t think people really look at the foundation as anything other than a fundraising group, but they are much more than that,” Wahl said. “They’re facilitators. They see what you want or what you’re interested in, and they help you marry your interests with the university, which makes the university better for the students, professors and the people who work there.”

Wahl said without the foundation’s help, it may have taken years to implement the diabetes program and launch the center of excellence.

“There’s no other chronic disease that requires more patient education and input than diabetes,” Wahl said. “I want to move as quickly as we can to get new therapies to diabetic individuals and improve their care.”