Our story

Our focus was and remains on finding cures for type 1 diabetes (T1D); since then, the organization has helped to fund research that has led to innovation and evolution of treatments that improve the quality of life for people living with T1D. 

Vision: A world without T1D 

Mission: Improving lives today and tomorrow by accelerating life-changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent and treat T1D and its complications 

Today: We are Breakthrough T1D. Recognizing that JDRF wasn’t reflective of both type 1 diabetes and the T1D community, we have refreshed our name to meet our mission where it already is.  

Our purpose is our north star: As we drive toward curing type 1 diabetes, we help to make every day better for the people living with it.   

Working toward a world without T1D 

Breakthrough T1D works every day to change the reality of this disease for millions of people—and to prevent anyone else from ever being diagnosed with it—by funding research, advocating for government support of research and improved access, ensuring new therapies come to market and connecting and engaging the T1D community. 

Thanks to these better therapies, which our funding has been instrumental in helping to develop and make available – people with T1D live longer and stay healthier while they await cures.  

We must keep up the pace of funding so progress doesn’t slow or stop entirely, so we can get to a world free from type 1 diabetes. 

Our history 

Breakthrough T1D (then known as JDRF) has led the search for cures for T1D since its founding in the United States in 1970. Four years later, JDRF Canada was founded. T1D in this era was commonly called “juvenile diabetes” because it was frequently diagnosed in; and strongly associated with, young children. Thus, 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 that this disease impacts both children and adults, in fact more than 70% of diagnoses are in adults and over 80% of the approximately 300,000 Canadians living with T1D are over 18 years old. It is for this reason that in November of 2024 we became Breakthrough T1D. 

While the name has changed, our mission, vision, values and purpose remain the same, and our commitment to the T1D community is unwavering.