Dr. Polonsky is President and Founder of the Behavioral Diabetes Institute, the world's first organization dedicated to tackling the unmet psychological needs of people with diabetes. A licensed clinical psychologist, certified diabetes educator and Associate Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, he has been studying the emotional and behavioral aspects of diabetes for over 20 years. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous professional and lay publications, including Diabetes Care, Diabetes Forecast, Clinical Diabetes, Diabetes Self-Management and Diabetes Health. His research efforts have focused on the psychological barriers to diabetes self-management, including depression, diabetes-related emotional distress, hypoglycemic fear, patient-provider communication, psychological insulin resistance, and disordered eating.

In addition to his professional publications, Dr. Polonsky is probably best known as the author of Diabetes Burnout: What to Do When You Can't Take it Anymore, a popular book for patients published by the American Diabetes Association. Dr. Polonsky received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale University and has served as Senior Psychologist at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Chairman of the National Certification Board for Diabetes Educators.