DAWN Award 2006 ceremony

Unique minority support programme highlighted with the DAWN Award 2006
This year's DAWN Award was given to Dr. Lubna Kerr, who has established a support programme in Scotland for ethnic minorities failing to manage their diabetes in a primary care setting. "I think it’s really important that when we treat a patient with diabetes we treat the whole person, and that includes family and life circumstances as they all play a part in the condition," she said during the award ceremony on 5 December.

The award is given by Novo Nordisk on behalf of the International Diabetes Federation and the International DAWN Advisory Board, and was presented at the International Diabetes Federation congress in Cape Town. Ruth Colagiuri of the DAWN International advisory board review committee handed over the DAWN award and congratulated her for her persistence and the importance of taking a holistic approach to this issue. Dr. Lubna Kerr thanked wholehearted for the DAWN award and expressed her excitement to now use the award to reach more ethnic minorities with diabetes in all of Scotland and world-wide.

"It is our hope that many countries will be inspired by this effort and set up support services that specifically address the needs of disadvantaged populations", says Soren Skovlund, manager of the DAWN Programme. This year the DAWN award of 15.000 EURO was earmarked for an initiative to support disadvantaged minority populations with diabetes in support of the IDF Year of disadvantaged minorities.

Among the runners-up two projects from India and Australia were chosen. Articles on the runners-up will appear in the International Diabetes Federation’s magazine, Diabetes Voice and an article on the winning project was recently published in the March issue -  read it here.