"My name is Beth Heitkemper and we are currently at Columbia University Medical Center in the
School of Bioinformatics. I am a student in the School of Nursing. I'm researching Diabetes
self management interventions.
When a person is diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes a lot of times they will need to change a
lot of their behaviors including lifestyle changes with their food habits and their exercise
habits. I'm interested in finding the best solutions for people who are really struggling
with making those changes.
I'm interested in this research because not only is it such a huge pressing problem for
the general population but because behavioral change is really hard.
I'm from Seattle, Washington. I definitely wanted to get into research because my mother
is a health science researcher. Seeing her career while I was growing up was really inspiring
and learning about all of the amazing discoveries she's made and watching her present her work
it's just always been something that I really thought was amazing.
I wanted to study Diabetes because growing up I had a friend who was a Type 1 Diabetic
which is fairly different that being Type 2, which is what I'm studying.
However, there are a lot of similarities and the self management behaviors are similar
that people need to learn.
It was always fascinating for me to hear her struggles and to try to support her in the
best way possible as a friend. I think once I went through nursing school and realized
what a huge problem this is for so many people that this was the area of focus I wanted to
study.
I was motivated to pursue a career in research because I did an amazing internship at the
National Institute of Health. After that internship, where I realized that I was interested in
pursuing this as a long term career.
What's so fascinating about the research that I do is it's so typically not in a laboratory
setting which is what most people think of as where a scientist works. For me, on any
given day I'm in three boroughs of New York City, I'm running out to health clinics and
interviewing patients for the research study that I'm participating with.
I guess the myth of the lab scientist doesn't really hold very true for me.
From day to day I rely very heavily on my slew of computers.
I'm very technologically challenged so it's really funny that I have a bunch of different
ones that I use regularly for different things.
Aside from my different army of computers I really just spend time with people. I do
a lot of interviewing. Whether it's in person or by phone and interacting in research teams.
I really like that aspect of it because what I generally liked about nursing so much in
the beginning was working with people and caring for people.
So it's been really rewarding to find out that that aspect doesn't go away when you
chose to do a career in research.
I'm working on a research project right now. It's a project that helps people better manage
their Diabetes. The preliminary results look very promising. My dissertation will be an
assessment of the readiness to translate this research into everyday clinical practice.
It never gets boring. A career in research is the most intellectually interesting career
you could every hope for. You are taught the tools to look at the world in a completely
different way and it's the most fascinating career, I think, you could ever hope for.
I look at some people's jobs and I hear about jobs that my friends do and they're so bored.
I do feel very lucky a lot of the time.
I would like people to know about Type 2 Diabetes and people who are struggling with managing
this very long term scary disease is that it can be done. Even though it might not be
an easy road from A to B I think that the way that we'll be able to do this is by coming
together and supporting every body. I'm very excited to help people feel like they can
do it."