Update – December 20, 2007

Dear Colleagues,

Greetings from Seattle!  I write to provide a follow-up on activities of the Global Diabetes Alliance we formed in Seattle two months ago.  Since then, we have accomplished several things.

1)      The PowerPoint slides used for the Workshop Reports are now available on the PNRI website (www.pnri.org) using the Magnuson Congress portal.  Soon the slides used for the Plenary Presentations will also be available using the password Seattle 2954.  Please understand that the latter slides are to be used by Alliance members only and not to be shared with others according to the agreement we made with the Plenary Speakers.  If you want to share the Plenary slides, you must obtain permission from the Speakers who made them.

2)      As agreed during the Congress, the Program Committee met and made the following decisions about structuring the Alliance:

A)    The Program Committee asked Pierre Lefevbre to assume the position of President of the Alliance for one year.  Pierre has graciously accepted and agreed to provide consultation and general oversight of the Alliance

B)    The Program Committee asked Pierre to appoint me as Chair of the Steering Committee, which is charged with organization of future activities of the Alliance and, most importantly, putting together a grant proposal that embodies the projects proposed in the Congress Workshops that are mostly likely to convince private, governmental, and commercial funders to provide financial support for the clinical research the Alliance envisions.  Emphasis will be on those projects that can be used world-wide so that the major variable will be the populations studied rather than the methodologies used.  I gratefully accepted Pierre’s invitation.

C)    The Program Committee selected the following individuals to be part of the Steering Committee for the first year.  These individuals were chosen because they attended the Magnuson Congress, are highly recognized clinical investigators, and represent five of the six WHO regions.  We still need to identify several additional members of the Steering Committee, which this committee itself will be responsible for doing as soon as possible.  The identified members who have accepted membership on the Steering Committee are: Eugene Sobngwi, Ake Lernmark, Knut Borch-Johnsen, Stewart Harris, Paul Robertson, Pedro Arroyo, Paul Zimmit, Linong Ji, and Anoop Misra.  One other person has been invited and her answer is pending.  You will note that we have not identified anyone yet from the Eastern Mediterranean region.  As Chair of the Steering Committee, I invite you to make nominations and/or volunteer to join this Committee.  The Committee needs to identify approximately 3-5 more people, keeping in mind that expertise in clinical investigation of diabetes and inclusion of world-wide regions is a primary goal.

I believe we are well positioned to begin our work in earnest at the first of the New Year.  In the meantime, in this holiday season I wish you pleasant days and a blessed and highly successful 2008!

Cheers,

Paul