Nishadi Rajapakse, Ph.D., M.H.S.

I direct a research program that focuses on type 2 diabetes in adult populations. This program supports observational studies, pilot, efficacy, effectiveness, and pragmatic trials, as well as natural experiment evaluations at the patient, family, provider, or community level to improve diabetes outcomes and quality of life and other patient-reported outcomes. The research focuses on individual level factors to improve diabetes prevention and care and intervention research that focuses on program adaptations of lifestyle and self-management interventions [e.g., National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support (DSMES)], drug interventions focused on health disparities, and diverse engagement approaches.

I also serve as the program director for the NIH Cardiovascular Repository for T1D (CaRe-T1D) program, a biorepository of human CV tissue and a scientific consortium to advance and support discovery and mechanistic research that increase the understanding of CVD in T1D.