Tadej Battelino: A Leader in Diabetes Care
The diaTribe Foundation awarded Dr. Tadej Battelino – a physician who keeps his patients at the center of all of his advocacy work – with a leadership award at this year’s Solvable Problems in Diabetes event.
Over the last quarter-century, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) has revolutionized diabetes care, empowering people to manage the condition on their own terms. An evolution from traditional blood glucose meters, CGM allows people with diabetes to track their own blood sugar in real-time, directly on their smart devices.
Dr. Tadej Battelino, professor of medicine at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, has played a leading role in convincing medical establishments to embrace this revolution. He and his colleagues were the first to show that CGM use could help people with type 1 diabetes lower their A1C.
In 2019, a group led by Battelino established time in range (70-180 mg/dL) as a meaningful measurement that people with diabetes could discuss with their healthcare providers. Since then, Battelino has been a leader on so many global efforts, including working closely with diaTribe’s Time in Range Coalition.
It’s because of his relentless drive to improve care for all people with diabetes that The diaTribe Foundation awarded Battelino with the Vanguard Leadership in Diabetes Award at EASD 2025.
Dr. Chantal Matthieu, EASD president and professor of medicine at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, presented the award and applauded Battelino’s sincere efforts to help improve the lives of people with diabetes. Although his advocacy and research work take him all over the world, she said, “He is still on-call. He still sees children in the ICU.”
When he was accepting the award, Battelino credited his early work with patients for helping him keep people with diabetes at the center of every recommendation he makes. Years ago, fresh out of medical school and brimming with confidence about everything he’d learned, he was quick to dispense advice.
“All of these people with diabetes came to the outpatient clinic, and I was telling them what to do,” he said. “They were looking at me like, ‘This guy’s crazy – I mean, he’s really freaking out.’”
The lesson didn’t take immediately, but once it did, it transformed Battelino’s perspective.
“The real way to learn diabetes is to listen to the people who live with it,” he said.
This person-centric focus pushed him to advocate for easy-to-use CGM metrics like time in range. And his colleagues have noticed how quickly people with diabetes have been to embrace these changes.
“Time in range has become an entity,” Matthieu said. “That’s what our young people now use without thinking.”
Despite all the progress in diabetes care and management that has occurred over the course of his career, Battelino said he thinks there is still more work to be done.
For people who are already living with diabetes, Battelino said that means using tools that can help them achieve even better blood sugar management – for example, time in tight range (70-140 mg/dL).
For people who are at risk of developing type 1 diabetes in particular, Battelino said that means getting screened. For people in the early stages of type 1, finding out early may enable the opportunity to try new therapies like Tzield (teplizumab), which can help preserve beta cell function and delay the onset of type 1 diabetes.
But even as he keeps his advocacy efforts focused on objectives he believes to be achievable right now, Battelino has never lost sight of the ultimate goal. “I promised the first kids I admitted 39 years ago in my career that we’ll find a cure. I still believe so.”
Learn more about screening and type 1 diabetes here: