Clinical Research Core

Purpose and Description

The Clinical Research Core (CRC) offers assistance to Diabetes Center Affiliate investigators who are involved in clinical research or who need clinical specimens in their basic science work. This Core maintains the Diabetes Registry (a database of about 1,000 subjects with diabetes who have expressed interest in participating in diabetes research and between 100-300 control subjects without diabetes).

The primary goal of the Clinical Research Core is to provide Affiliate Investigators with access to human volunteers, with and without diabetes, for clinical research. The specific services which the Core provides include recruitment of volunteers for research studies, and obtaining serum, plasma, blood, questionnaire data or other research specimens. These specimens can be delivered to the investigator or to other sites.

In addition, the Core Director serves as a resource in the general area of clinical research by providing formal and informal consultation to investigators on clinical research methods, clinical epidemiology, and applied statistical analysis. The Clinical Research Core now includes self-held web pages to guide investigators to resources that will provide assistance with several pertinent subject areas, including clinical research design, sample size and power calculations, free statistics software, and a listing of public databases of potential use in clinical and epidemiologic diabetes research. You can access these resources from the menu on the right side of this page.