Bar-Ilan University | President’s Report 2022

21 Prof. NaimShehadeh is the director of the Institute of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism at Haifa’s Rambam Health Care Campus, the president of the Israel Diabetes Association, and the director of SPHERE. Previously, he led a communityintervention program in the Galilean town of Nazareth that harnessed the combined efforts of local health clinics, municipalities, schools, and churches to address the cultural, and environmental determinants responsible for diabetes. The knowledge gleaned from that program will help guide the prevention pillar of SPHERE. A FOUR-PRONGED PLANOF ATTACK SPHERE’s innovative model integrates all available resources to strengthen and extend their efficacy. PREVENT By integrating information from the North’s healthcare, education, and social-welfare sectors, SPHEREwill facilitate data-driven interventions that encourage healthy lifestyle choices and prevent the development of diabetes. Specific projects include a 160-indicator digital Municipal Health Dashboard for tracking the overall health and particular health behaviors of community residents and informing city leaders’ urban planning policies. CONTROL SPHERE will help patients and their physicians obtain optimal treatment targets and avoid dangerous complications by addressing specific obstacles to diabetes management. Projects include a one-stop, mobile diabetes-testing clinic that eliminates the need formultiple and lengthy trips by bus to hospitals and health clinics and a health app forwomenwith gestational diabetes. The app allows patients doctors to monitor their health remotely andoffers culturally tailored prescriptions for healthier food choices and low-cost health services. CARE SPHERE will break down the healthcare silos between primary-care practices, emergency units, and social welfare organizations by means of an integrated, crosssector database. In turn, patients’ physicians can make data-driven decisions for better results. CURE Harnessing the potential of large-scale genomic and digital health data to understand and predict the occurrence of diabetes, SPHERE will conduct cutting-edge research to investigate the disease’s mechanisms and biology. New researchers will join existing faculty in their quest to develop more targeted drugs and match patients with personalized treatments for maximum efficacy. 10K NIS A Story in Stats 6-8% 600K Israelis are diabetic of Israel’s one million “pre-diabetic” patients develop full-blown diabetes each year the average annual amount saved by the Israeli healthcare system for every pre-diabetic patient who does not convert to type-2 diabetes Prof. Naim Shehadeh

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