Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that strikes both children and adults suddenly. It has nothing to do with diet or lifestyle. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. And, at present, there is no cure.

In T1D, your pancreas stops producing insulin—a hormone the body needs to get energy from food. This means a process your body does naturally and automatically becomes something that now requires your daily attention and manual intervention. If you have T1D, you must constantly monitor your blood-sugar level, inject or infuse insulin through a pump, and carefully balance these insulin doses with your eating and activity throughout the day and night.

However, insulin is not a cure for diabetes. Even with the most vigilant disease management, a significant portion of your day will be spent with either high or low blood-sugar levels. These fluctuations place people with T1D at risk for potentially life-threatening hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic episodes as well as devastating long-term complications such as kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, blindness and amputation. Learn more about T1D.

JDRF works every day to change the reality of this disease for millions of people—and to prevent anyone else from ever knowing it—by funding research; advocating for government support of research and new therapies; ensuring new therapies come to market and are recommended by healthcare providers; and connecting, engaging, and educating the T1D community.

Founded by parents determined to find a cure for their children with T1D, JDRF expanded through grassroots fundraising and advocacy efforts to become a powerhouse in the scientific community with dozens of U.S. locations and five international affiliates. We’ve funded about $2.5 billion in research to date and have made significant progress in understanding and fighting the disease. We must keep up the pace of funding so progress doesn’t slow or stop entirely.

You’re the reason for our success.

Every dollar we put toward research comes from donations. So when you support JDRF with your time, talent, voice and, yes, your money, you enable us to advance even more research.

There are many ways to join the JDRF family, but since our founding in 1970 there has been only one reason—because we are the organization that will turn Type One into Type None.

Get Involved

JDRF has led the search for a cure for T1D since our founding in 1970. In those days, people commonly called the disease “juvenile diabetes” because it was frequently diagnosed in, and strongly associated with, young children. Our organization began as the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Later, to emphasize exactly how we planned to end the disease, we added a word and became the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Today, we know an equal number of children and adults are diagnosed every day—approximately 110 people per day. Thanks to better therapies—which JDRF funding has been instrumental in developing and making available—people with T1D live longer and stay healthier while they await the cure. So a few years ago, we changed our name to JDRF:

• To remove the misconception that T1D is only a childhood disease
• To acknowledge that nearly 85 percent of people living with the disease are over age 18
• To reinforce our commitment to funding research that improves life for people at all ages and all stages of the disease