By Nalini Saligram, CEO & Founder
This year’s meeting in Vancouver (30 Nov – 4 Dec 2015) had many interesting highlights from a scientific perspective, even though it had less attendance overall than the 2013 Melbourne conference.
Our mDiabetes poster on effectiveness in rural and urban India was chosen for poster discussion, and generated much interest. The electronic poster discussions were smooth and the conference organizers did a good job with that.
The most interesting output of the entire conference was the International Diabetes Federation’s Diabetes Prevention Score for cities. It is fascinating that criteria and even a score have been developed by IDF, and validated in two cities: Brussels and Amsterdam. The presentation of their results gave me much food for thought. It was also interesting to see that Novo Nordisk started a Cities against Diabetes campaign one year ago.
Scientists discussed the concept of “benign obesity,” which is when may be on the heavier side of the BMI scale but still metabolically healthy. They agreed that this was a transient stage and would ultimately lead to unhealthy obesity. It was also clear that abdominal obesity and waist circumference are more important than BMI as predictors of health. And for South Asians, the biggest factor seems to be where the fat is deposited.
I was proud that Dr. Fran Kaufman mentioned Arogya World and preliminary results from our mDiabetes study in her presentation. It was great to attend presentations from many of our Advisors and collaborators throughout the meeting.
It was also cool to listen to Alex Jadad, a Canadian doctor, who goaded all of us to build a Pandemic of Health. Hmm, health can be infectious!