Preserving the Health of Children with Type 1 Diabetes
Britta M. Svoren, M.D., will be joining the URMC Division of Pediatric Endocrinology from Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital and the Joslin Diabetes Center. Svoren's research interests have focused on preserving the health and preventing the complications of children, adolescents and young adults living with type 1 diabetes.
Svoren’s previous clinical research activities have involved investigating which methods of diabetes management predict healthy outcomes. In particular, she demonstrated that use of a “care ambassador" (a non-medically-trained staff person who serves as liaison to the family) resulted in a 30 percent reduction in the need for hospitalization or emergency room visits and a 50 percent reduction in the occurrence of severe hypoglycemia in the intervention group.
More recently, Svoren found that greater than three-quarters of youth with type 1 diabetes had insufficient levels of vitamin D. These findings suggest that children with the disease may need vitamin D supplementation to prevent bone fragility later in life.