30 years ago, children and young adults living with type 2 diabetes were almost unheard of. Today, well over 1,000 children and young people are affected in Australia, with marginalised communities seeing the highest growth in diagnosis. Since the start of her career, Dr Danielle Longmore, has been working hard to change this.
Type 2 diabetes has recently been declared as one of the defining diseases of the 21st century. This condition occurs when a person’s blood sugar is too high, affecting how their body uses glucose.
While nutritional change, activity and medication can help manage, or even reverse the condition, type 2 diabetes often leads to life-altering morbidity and early mortality.
Danielle saw first-hand the impact this condition had when she first began to train in paediatrics. During this time, she worked across Northern Australia, in remote Aboriginal communities, where she saw the intergenerational cycle of diabetes.
“I would see babies born to mothers with diabetes in pregnancy. Then I would see young people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes becoming the mothers that had diabetes in pregnancy. That cycle was really evident to me,” Danielle shared.
Today, Danielle is a paediatric endocrinologist and researcher at The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She completed her PhD on the impact of maternal diabetes in pregnancy on infants at the Menzies School of Health Research in the Northern Territory.
This year, Danielle has been awarded the opportunity to change the future of children’s health as part of the RCH’s Clinician Scientist Fellowship program. This program, supported by the RCH Foundation, provides protected and funded research time to some of the best clinical minds, allowing them to focus on helping patients at the RCH and beyond.
Danielle’s research centres on improving health outcomes for children with type 2 diabetes and obesity. Her research project consists of two phases. In the first phase, she hopes to understand how certain elements can contribute to the disease through setting up a clinical research network across Australia.
“Unfortunately, this condition disproportionately affects young people from lower socioeconomic groups. So, I’m really interested in how those structural components have contributed to ill health and early onset obesity and diabetes,” Danielle explained.
In the second phase, she will look to set up an observational study to understand the drivers for obesity and other metabolic diseases.
“I’m interested in the experience of weight stigma and how the experience of marginalisation and discrimination can impact health. It’s a deep dive into the health impact of social and psychological experiences,” Danielle said.
While Danielle’s research aims to prioritise the health of the disadvantaged, it will also have an impact globally.
“I think if we can find ways of improving health and also managing the condition well to prevent morbidity and early mortality, the benefits will be huge,” she highlighted.
Ultimately, Danielle hopes for her research to inform policy, drive health-related economic benefits, empower young people with the condition, and result in a change in the narrative surrounding the illness. She believes that this can drive health outcomes broadly but particularly among young people from communities that experience marginalisation.
“Type 2 diabetes is a condition that highlights the impact of social inequity. Hopefully, we can narrow that gap and improve the health for lots of people, but particularly among those who have experienced disadvantage,” Danielle said.