The Center for Geospatial Medicine at the University of Michigan is working to reduce death and disability from Type 2 diabetes under a grant announced today as part the nation's 2010 health care law. The center is part of a multi-state research team examining Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, in at-risk populations in four, underserved counties in North Carolina, Mississippi, and West Virginia. The Center for Geospatial Medicine, which uses systematic, spatially-based methods for analyzing environmental threats to people and communities, is housed within the Children's Environmental Health Initiative at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment.

The research tool of spatial-data analysis is key to discovering and addressing environmental risks to children's health, Marie Lynn Miranda said Monday in giving the 11th Annual Wege Lecture on Sustainability.Miranda, the new dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment, said such tools give both scientists and policy makers the ability to see obscure but possibly meaningful connections between a child's environment and his or her health. (VIEW VIDEO). The lecture drew on Miranda's more than 20 years of research on the topic, and specifically her published work about lead contamination among children.

Improving health outcomes and quality of life for people living with type 2 diabetes are the goals of a project between a new research center at the University of Michigan and university, health and public officials in North Carolina. The Center for Geospatial Medicine, which recently moved from Duke University to U-M's School of Natural Resources and Environment, is a partner in a $6.2 million grant announced today by the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation as part of its national diabetes initiative, Together on Diabetes. The project's other partners are the Duke University Medical Center and the Durham County Health Department. The project will focus on residents of North Carolina's Durham County, home to Duke.