Our Story
In 2021, a generous $20-million donation from Novo Nordisk Canada and matching funds from U of T established the University of Toronto’s Novo Nordisk Network for Healthy Populations to jumpstart this new era in the fight against diabetes and related conditions. This cross-disciplinary research network at the University of Toronto aims to reduce the burden of diabetes and related chronic conditions. The Novo Nordisk Network brings together such experts from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and University of Toronto Mississauga—where the Network is based—to find new ways to support healthier urban populations.
The Network aims to support the co-creation of locally relevant solutions that can help improve health outcomes for not just individuals, but whole communities. Researchers intend to address the root cause of diabetes and chronic conditions, develop interventions to prevent its current unsustainable rise, enable more early detection of the disease, ameliorate risk factors such as health access barriers, and close the gap in health outcomes for equity-deserving communities, who currently bear an outsized impact of diseases like diabetes and its related conditions.
Although based in Mississauga and Peel Region, the Novo Nordisk Network’s scalable solutions will have impact globally amore cities adopt and adapt these for their own unique contexts. Ultimately, the Network aims to discover, implement, and validate feasible, equitable, and sustainable solutions that can make cities around the world healthier places to live — for all of their residents.