Mission of SWEET

Mission of SWEET

To reduce Inequalities in Access to and Quality of Pediatric Diabetes Care.

Inequalities in levels of and access to specialized multidisciplinary diabetes care and education continue to exist across the world. This variability is a consequence of many factors, the most significant being the social and cultural differences among countries, differences in clinical governance, and lack of structured networks of interested parties with commonly agreed goals.

In addition, the need for registries of patients, networks of specialist researchers, access to bio-banks and human biological material (especially in relation to the rarer complications) and the need for more standardized treatment guidelines have repeatedly been mentioned as roadblocks in the European diabetes research landscape.

Since shortcomings and inequalities are mainly due to the underlying differences in systems, the most straightforward solution is the creation of a network of pediatric diabetes centers worldwide, connected through common objectives and standards. That is exactly what SWEET has been doing since 2008.

A connection and collaboration between diabetes centers additionally allows a joint collection, handling and evaluation of standardized data sets (cross-border research) thus improving the situation for children with diabetes independent of where they live.