Dr. Dabelea is a Professor of Epidemiology and Pediatrics and the Director of the Lifecourse Epidemiology of Adiposity and Diabetes (LEAD) Center at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (AMC).

Her main research interest is understanding how early life behaviors, environmental exposures and other risk factors operating during fetal or early post-natal life, influence the development of obesity, diabetes  and cardiovascular outcomes throughout the lifecourse (developmental origins of health and disease). Her experience includes epidemiological studies with community-based and clinic-based sampling, longitudinal follow-up, and extensive sample collection and storage.

As the Director of the LEAD Center and lead investigator on over $18 million NIH and CDC grants, she oversees large, longitudinal, cohort studies spanning the entire lifecourse, from pregnancy through old age. Among others, she serves as national Co-Chair of the Steering Committee for the multi-center SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study. SEARCH is a landmark US population-based study conducting both surveillance and observational research in the field of pediatric type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Dabelea is also part of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS), another landmark US diabetes study in older adults, which has provided the evidence base for diabetes prevention efforts, and is now studying diabetes-and aging-related outcomes and comorbidities.

Finally, Dr. Dabelea is also Principal Investigator of Healthy Start, a Colorado pre-birth cohort study following over 1400 mother –child dyads from before birth through childhood and adolescence, to understand the developmental origins of several chronic pediatric diseases. With Healthy Start, Dr. Dabelea leads a multi-disciplinary team of investigators, as part of the NIH-assembled ECHO consortium (Environmental influences on Childhood Health Outcomes). These studies, several ancillary studies supported by these cohorts, as well as other studies conducted by LEAD investigators under Dr. Dabelea’s direction, provide an exceptionally rich resource for training and mentoring students, junior faculty, residents and fellows in clinical diabetes research, lifecourse research, maternal and child health research, and chronic disease epidemiology.