Abstract
In light of the technological advances in diabetes therapy becoming more widely available and with healthcare costs rising generally, economic data regarding health care are desperately needed to allocate resources appropriately. 'SWEET' is an acronym derived from 'Better control in Pediatric and Adolescent diabeteS: Working to crEate CEnTers of Reference' and is based on a partnership of established national and European diabetes organizations (www.sweet-project.eu) led by the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ISPAD), with the initial participating pediatric centres being from the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the UK. In addition, the valuable contributions of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Europe, the Federation of European Nurses in Diabetes (FEND), and Primary Care Diabetes Europe (PCDE) need to be acknowledged.
Co-funding for the initial project was granted by the European Public Health Executive Agency with additional funds from corporate partners and foundations (see acknowledgements for the complete list). The present Special Issue of Pediatric Diabetes summarizes the major findings of the project.
Before SWEET, 17 out of 26 EU countries had officially recognized centers for pediatric diabetes, but only eight of them had defined criteria for becoming such a center. A system of quality control of pediatric diabetes at the national level was reported from 7/26 countries.
Only 13/26 EU countries had a pediatric diabetes register. These SWEET results were based on 108 datasets from healthcare professionals caring for >29 000 children and adolescents with diabetes in Europe.