As we discussed yesterday, setting goals is one of the first, but most important steps when it comes to setting a concrete plan for achieving an objective, such as finding a cure for type 1 diabetes.
We have been learning to set goals and targets since an early age at school – but it is true that plans sometimes get sidetracked, problems come up, or we realize we do not have the right tools necessary to reach where we want to be at a given time. As pretty much all researchers will tell you, finding a cure for any disease is no easy task – let alone a chronic one like type 1 diabetes that scientists have worked on for almost a century.
No matter how hard it gets, however, what provides us with some sense of clarity and direction is establishing definitions and making goals concrete. We need to clarify the endpoint everyone is working towards – we need to know what exactly will most people accept as a “cure” for diabetes.
As a reminder, you can read JDCA’s definition of a Practical Cure here.
Another very important step is setting a cure by date. No, we can not guarantee if or when we will see a cure for type 1 – but if we all work together and demand change in terms of how donations are spent, we can greatly increase the chances that we see one within our lifetime, or before 2025. What is more, date to target for helps set research objectives as well as benchmarks to track progress. When we look at how far we have come in the next 3 years, or five years, and measure how much more we still have to go, we will have a better understanding of what is working and what is not.
We need to reverse the trend of shrinking funding for type 1 cure research. This means that we need to focus on projects that are most likely to achieve a cure – the non-profit foundations have the best chance to helping us find a cure, as they have the money and the resources to do so, but we must urge that the donor money be spent responsively and go to projects that really do have the potential to produce the desires results.
– Stoyan
