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Sharon Brown, RN, PhD, FAAN, associate dean for research and professor of nursing at the University of Texas at Austin, has received a four-year, $1.3 million National Institutes of Health grant to identify ways to achieve better glycemic control in persons with type 2 diabetes, according to a news release.

Brown is hoping to discover why so few people with diabetes achieve glycemic control. “What we don’t know is how to motivate individuals to make these critical behavioral changes,” Brown said in the release.

Brown’s new research will analyze past research and examine possible mechanisms for fostering behavioral change. “It is imperative to synthesize these studies to inform clinical guidelines so that healthcare providers can effectively address the growing global diabetes epidemic,” said Brown, a specialist in health promotion and disease prevention in Mexican Americans with type 2 diabetes.

“Plausible explanations for low rates of glycemic control are depression, side effects of diabetes treatments, including medications, and the complexities of self-management, all of which may negatively impact one’s quality of life,” she says.