Research Impact Hub | Diabetes Australia

Our Research Strategy

The Diabetes Australia Research Strategy 2025–2030 sets a transformative vision: to accelerate research and innovation that prioritises scientific excellence, delivers real-world impact, is shaped by lived experience, and addresses the most pressing needs of the diabetes community.

The Strategy marks a new era in Diabetes Australia’s role in diabetes research to help sustain Australia’s world-class research sector, and support research informed by people living with diabetes and backed by collaboration.

By ensuring research investments translate into tangible health, social, and economic benefits, we envision research that is conducted not just for people living with diabetes – but with them.

Read the full Strategy

Download the Diabetes Australia Research Strategy 2025-2030 and learn about our research vision, platforms, initiatives and governance.

Our role in research

Research priorities

News and announcements

Get involved

Our aim

Our aim is to empower community-informed research and innovation. Turning bold ideas into tangible, evidence-based solutions to eliminate the impact of diabetes on individuals, health systems, and society.

Our objectives

This Strategy provides a clear framework for researchers, people with lived experience, health professionals, diabetes educators, and partners – including industry, government and health systems – to work together to accelerate progress and improve lives.

Our objectives are to:

Activate high-quality research that delivers measurable impact for people living with, and at risk of, diabetes, health systems and society.
Further strengthen the capability, capacity and competitiveness of the diabetes research sector to achieve research impact in partnership with the diabetes community.

The Strategy will be delivered through four platforms:

Research Funding Programs: Strategic investment in researchers, teams and partners to support groundbreaking projects.
Research Training Programs: Building research leadership skills for researchers and the diabetes community.
Community Research Engagement: Fostering collaboration, engagement and participation for people living with, and at risk of diabetes, their families and carers to engage in research.
Research Partnership Network: Facilitating collaboration across and between sectors.

Each platform includes targeted initiatives designed to create impact.

Our role in diabetes research

A leading non-government funder of diabetes research in Australia

Social impact: improving the lives of people living with, or at risk of, diabetes

We fund innovative research aimed at preventing, managing or finding a cure for diabetes. Our key functions are to:

Advocate – Champion greater investment investment and policy support for diabetes research.

Fundraise – Mobilise resources to grow and support high-impact, transformative research.

Fund – Invest across early to later stage research and researchers, to advance strategic goals and address community unmet needs.

Translate – Ensure research outcomes are translated and activated into real-life applications, making a tangible difference to people’s lives, health systems and society.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve invested $50M+ in groundbreaking research. Our funding has supported:

New treatments and technologies
Improved prevention strategies
Policy and practice changes
The career development of researchers and capacity of the research sector.

The decline in government funding for diabetes research over the past decade is significantly impacting the research community. Advocating for greater investment remains a top priority, as does capacity building to support researchers to respond to changes in the research ecosystem.

Our approach

As the national peak body for diabetes and one of the largest non-government funders of diabetes research in Australia, we are uniquely positioned to drive meaningful impact through research and associated innovation. Our research efforts reflect the priorities of the diabetes community and aim to create lasting and wide-reaching change that improve lives.

Our emphasis is on scientific excellence alongside a community-informed approach to research, ensuring research investments translate into tangible benefits to create health, social and economic impact. We envision a future where research is not only conducted for people living with, and at risk of, diabetes, but with them.

By embedding the voices and lived experiences of people living with diabetes across every stage of the research process, Diabetes Australia aims to stimulate scientific breakthroughs that translate into meaningful benefits.

Research with,
not just for, people living with, or at risk of, diabetes.

Research priorities

Our research is strategically aligned with our goals and shaped by community-informed priorities and involvement. In particular, we are committed to research supporting vulnerable groups and those disproportionately affected by diabetes.