Salford Royal is supporting a campaign to encourage people with diabetes to get involved with research to help improve treatment and prevention of the condition.
Salford Royal hosts the ‘Help DiaBEATes’ campaign, supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network: Greater Manchester which encourages people who have diabetes and who live in Greater Manchester to get involved in research.
Research helps to bring about improvements in prevention, treatment and care but can only take place with the help of people who have the condition.
Around 12,000 people in Salford have been diagnosed with diabetes which, if not well controlled, can cause serious health problems including heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney failure and amputation.
Katherine Grady, Salford Royal programme development manager for the campaign, said: “People with diabetes play a vital role in all aspects of research. There are lots of ways to get involved from simple questionnaires about living with diabetes to clinical trials of new treatments.
“Many people in Greater Manchester have already heard about a range of research studies as a result of registering their details with Help DiaBEATes and the researchers have told us what a valuable contribution this has made to their work. Imagine what a difference we could make if even more people get involved.”
The Help DiaBEATes team are using World Diabetes Day on Friday, November 14, as an opportunity to highlight the benefits of taking part in diabetes research. The day also marks the birthday of Frederick Banting who together with Charles Best, conceived the idea which led to the discovery of insulin in 1921.
To find out more about the Help DiaBEATes campaign go online www.researchforthefuture.nihr.ac.uk
If you are over 18 and interested in joining the campaign you can sign up online or text research and your name to 81400 (standard text rate). A health advisor will then telephone you to confirm your registration.