A new research institute on the Mississippi Gulf Coast will work with one of the nation’s top diabetes programs. MPB’s Evelina Burnett explains.
The National Diabetes & Obesity Research Institute will be located on a planned medical campus in the Tradition community, north of Gulfport. Developer Joseph Canizaro says the 150-acre “medical city” will also include Memorial hospital and Coastal Family health center facilities, as well as a pharmacy school and a dyslexia school for elementary students.
"Everything we could get related to health, health care and helping human beings to live longer and living a better life," he says.
A new nursing school is already under construction at the site. Canizaro says he hopes to start on a 100-thousand square-foot building for the research institute within the next year. This week, the institute announced it would be affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic, the number 3 program for diabetes care in the U.S. Do
Dr. Richard Shewbridge is an endocrinologist at the Cleveland Clinic and will be the medical director for the affiliation.
"Short term, we hope to bring light to the depth of the problem of diabetes in Mississippi with data-driven research, and then in the future, we want Tradition, Mississippi, to be an epicenter of diabetes and obesity research nationally and worldwide," he says.
Experts from the Cleveland Clinic will work with the institute on diabetes research, education and care with the goal ultimately to cure diabetes.
