Jun 1, 2017
This week, we were in Boston, on lots of Diabetes-related business. We were able to spend some time at Joslin Diabetes Center, and on campus at Harvard Medical. We also enjoyed the company of some old friends in the “D” community, and met some new ones. A fantastic week in the historic city of Boston.
On today’s DiabetesPowerShow, Charlie Cherry, Chris Daniel, and Lori Cherry are broadcasting from the offices of GrassrootsDiabetes.org in Boston, Massachusetts. We are honored to speak with the Founder and Executive Director, Richard A Jackson, MD.
Richard A Jackson, MD - Founder and Executive Director of Grassroots Diabetes.
Dr. Jackson is an Endocrinologist and founder and President of Health Analytics Solutions, which provides proprietary data analysis and visualizations from a variety of healthcare databases, as well as consultations on chronic disease management. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an adjunct investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center. He is an avid Red Sox fan, and enjoys spending time at Fenway Park throughout the baseball season.
More About Dr. Jackson
The On the Road program was developed in 2001 collaboration with colleagues at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Dr. Bill Polonsky, a world-renowned diabetes psychologist, Melinda Maryniuk, an award-winning diabetes educator, the USDA, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Extension Services. For more than a decade, OTR was field-tested and modified with over 15,000 participants across the US.
In 2012, Dr. Jackson and the On the Road team were awarded the prestigious Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center award, as a part of the Affordable Care Act, to assess new types of low-cost approaches to healthcare. This 3 year award further validated and refined the OTR program, prompting Dr. Jackson to found Grass Roots Diabetes, in the hopes that the OTR program reaches as many people as possible around the world.
In addition to being Founder and Executive Director of Grassroots Diabetes, Dr. Rich Jackson is also Founder and President of Health Analytics Solutions, which provides proprietary data analysis and visualizations from a variety of healthcare databases, as well as consultations on chronic disease management.
During his 30 years at Joslin, Dr. Jackson was a Mary K. Iacocca Fellow, and received the Cookie Pierce Research Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, became head of the Immunology Section, and started the Hood Center for Prevention of Childhood Diabetes at the Joslin.
He was involved with early trials to prevent type 1 diabetes, and was a Principal Investigator for the Diabetes Prevention Trial - Type 1 (DPT-1), the first NIH funded multi-center study for type 1 diabetes prevention.
Beginning in 2001, he developed outreach programs in underserved areas, and was awarded a prestigious 5 million dollar Medicare/Medicaid Innovation award, to further develop these programs, using community health workers. His non-profit, Grass Roots Diabetes, is extending the impact of these programs.
In addition, Dr. Jackson served as Director of Medical Affairs for Joslin’s extramural programs, with a variety of outside partners. He was also Medical Director for Joslin’s national clinical affiliation program, for which he established and tested a new set of clinical metrics for evaluating practices.