Sept. 22, 2026 — Some patients drive across state lines to see him. Others fly from Europe, Costa Rica and El Salvador seeking his expertise in Type 1 diabetes care. Now, Desmond Schatz, M.D., a professor emeritus in the Department of Pediatrics and the former medical director of the University of Florida Diabetes Institute, is entering a new season of retirement after more than four decades at the university.

With national and international acclaim in pediatric endocrinology, more than 460 published manuscripts and countless awards to his name, Schatz is widely recognized as one of the foremost physician-scientists in his field. Globally, he is beloved by parents, patients, colleagues and mentees alike for a lifelong devotion to preventing and curing diabetes, a mission he looks forward to bestowing upon future fellows.

“Even though Des has more academic accolades than nearly anyone else in the field, we all know what he values most are the deep and lasting relationships he has built over a lifetime of service,” said Michael Haller, M.D., chief of pediatric endocrinology and a professor in the Department of Pediatrics.

Such relationships extend to the residents and graduate research trainees in his lab, the families in his clinic and the custodial staff he converses with daily, all of whom he actively listens to and asks about. Personally investing in the people around him is a lesson Schatz has strived to pass on to generations of students and residents.

“What I always tell my students and residents is, ‘You may have done X, or you may have done Y, but did you make a difference in their lives? By listening, did you make a difference?’” Schatz said.

Schatz grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he attended medical school before completing an externship with the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Pediatrics. In 1983, he arrived at UF for an internship and residency in pediatrics, where he said he felt at home right away. He later completed a pediatric endocrinology fellowship.

Over the course of his career, Schatz would go on to serve as medical director of the UF Diabetes Institute, interim chair of the Department of Pediatrics, director of the Clinical Research Center within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and president of Medicine & Science for the American Diabetes Association.

Among Schatz’s many contributions while at UF was his role in developing the NIH’s TrialNet program, the largest international network of Type 1 diabetes researchers. Schatz’s early contributions to the original NIH Diabetes Prevention Trial, or DPT-1, helped UF become a founding member of TrialNet, where he played a key role in developing the network’s clinical trials as principal investigator.

He was also responsible for co-creating investigations within the international TEDDY, or The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in Youth, study, a worldwide research initiative that screened over 400,000 infants for genetic risk of Type 1 diabetes. With more than 8,000 high-risk children and their families participating in a 15-year longitudinal study, the TEDDY program is one of the largest and most illuminating in scientists’ quest to understand the role of environment and genetics in the formation of Type 1 diabetes.

“Some of the greatest discoveries have always been made by out-of-the-box thinking,” said Schatz. “And I think that even for diabetes, that’s an approach that we need to take. To challenge existing dogma.”

He also earned numerous awards for his dedication to diabetes research and care, including the American Diabetes Association’s Banting Medal for Service, JDRF’s George Eisenbarth Award for outstanding research advances toward the prevention of Type 1 diabetes, the David Paulus Award for Clinical Excellence, the Pediatric Endocrine Society Senior Investigator Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the UF College of Medicine and the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes Prize for achievement, the highest honor awarded by this organization.

Mark Atkinson, Ph.D., the American Diabetes Association Eminent Scholar Chair for Diabetes Research, the Jeffrey Keene Family Professor, and a professor in the Departments of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine and Pediatrics, describes himself as “joined at the hip” with Schatz after decades of working together.

“Des possesses every quality you could ever hope for in a colleague, a leader and a friend,” Atkinson said. “He has an unwavering, uncompromising commitment to always put the needs of people with Type 1 diabetes first. There was never any ambiguity about his priorities. The patients always came first.”

One of these patients is pre-med student Ava Dunn, who was volunteering with a UF Clinical Research Center mobile vehicle unit when she received Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease diagnoses. She recounts an early conversation with Schatz, her mentor at the time, who cleared his schedule to meet her at the pediatric endocrinology clinic for her first insulin injection and diabetes education session. Schatz stayed with her family for seven hours to ensure they felt equipped and empowered to support Ava’s diabetes management.

“One of the first things that he told me was, ‘You need to remember that you can do anything that you want to do. You are able to do everything,’” she said. “Because my immediate thought is that there’s so much that I can’t do, now that I have to worry about my diabetes.”

That approach reflects a philosophy of over-delivering that Schatz has implemented into clinical practice. His legacy of listening, building trust and making time is evidenced in his promise to dedicate a minimum of 45 minutes to each patient during clinical visits. He’s not in favor of brief clinic appointments, aimed solely at discussing lab results without time to listen to the patient on an individual level.

“That, to me, is a breakdown in relationship,” he said. “I’m not in favor of those kinds of relationships or those kinds of encounters.”

He opts to go beyond providing medical advice about nutrition or insulin, instead asking patients whether they can afford nutritious foods, whether they have the resources to exercise and about the state of their mental health.

“I’ve always said in diabetes: If the only tool you have in your toolbox is a hammer, then insulin is the only tool you have for diabetes,” Schatz said. “But there are so many other tools for diabetes. It’s emotional support. It’s nutritional support. It’s exercise support. It is relationship support.”

For Schatz, retirement doesn’t mean saying goodbye to the relationships he has built with generations of patients, including some he has watched grow up to have children of their own.

“You can always come to me for advice,” he told them. He also plans to continue mentoring residents while spending more time with his grandchildren and family.

And to the colleagues and students who have become his family at the University of Florida, he imparted a final message: “I’m very lucky and very grateful to have such people who I believe will be incredibly successful. And I look to them already with pride and joy that I can leave this institution in such good hands.”