The American Diabetes Association clinical care guidelines stress the importance of metabolic control to prevent complications and improve quality of life for persons with diabetes. Unfortunately, these guidelines have not had widespread acceptance into clinical practice. Therefore, we propose translational research to evaluate telemedicine technology using interactive video conferencing (Diabetes TeleCare) as a novel means to increase the availability of health professionals in rural communities for the effective delivery of a diabetes self-management education program and as a means to provide retinal screenings in the primary care setting.