SIG Update
The Diabetes Special Interest Group (SIG) continues to grow with 110 current members. This year, we saw many great posters and presentations highlighting the outstanding psychosocial diabetes research being conducted by our colleagues. We were excited to award this year’s Diabetes SIG student poster award to Alicia Pardon and her colleagues for their poster entitled, “Feasibility of a Pilot Study to Examine a Fear of Hypoglycemia Intervention in Mothers of Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes."
Our SIG has also been working on many initiatives to support our mission of providing assessment and treatment resources related to pediatric diabetes, increasing collaborative opportunities among clinicians and researchers, promoting integrated team approaches to the medical management of youth with diabetes and their families, and training and mentoring new diabetes-focused researchers and clinicians. Recent initiatives to advance our mission include:
- New Website and Resource Banks: In the past year, we launched a SIG website where members can find:
- An assessment resource database with psychosocial measures related to diabetes and a list of diabetes-specific COVID-19 resources
- Recordings of past webinars for professionals
- Resources for families, including websites, books, helpful organizations, and a Diabetes SIG handout for siblings
- Diabetes-related internship and post-doc sites
- We are also working on an intervention resource database, which will be coming soon to our website
- Social Media Presence: We created new social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram where you can follow our posts related to psychosocial aspects of diabetes for youth and families.
- We regularly post key resources for youth and families through our #DiabetesFriyay Resource Corner.
- The Humans of Diabetes Psychology series highlights clinicians, researchers, academics, and students/trainees, who support youth with diabetes. You can share your own story or nominate someone you know to be featured in this series through our online form (all career stages including trainees are welcome):
- Webinar Series: In the past year, we also launched our webinar series to highlight novel research and connect professionals within our community. Stay tuned for an upcoming trainee- and early-career-focused webinar led by leaders in the field on an introduction to diabetes and psychosocial considerations.
Current SIG Leadership
Chair: Jenna Shapiro, PhD
Co-Chair: Paul Enlow, PhD
Communications Chair: Samantha Carreon, PhD
Dissemination Committee Chair: Amy Noser, PhD
Dissemination Committee Co-Chair: Ericka Rutledge, PhD
Online and Advocacy Chair: Sobha Fritz, PhD
Online and Advocacy Co-Chair: Christina Nicolais, PhD
Trainee Member-At-Large: Sahar Eshtehardi, MS
Trainee Member-At-Large: Karen Dimentstein, MPH
Trainee Member-At-Large: Ke Ding, MS
We also greatly appreciate our additional volunteer committee members on our Dissemination Committee and Online & Advocacy Committee who contribute their time and efforts to our initiatives. If you are interested in learning more about contributing through our committees, please contact us via the contact form on our website or email us at SPPDiabetesSIG@gmail.com.
To Join the Diabetes SIG
SPP invites members with a shared interest to consider joining one or more Special Interest Groups (SIGs) by logging into the Member Portal and going to "Join a SIG/RIG/Affinity Group" on the dropbox.