Since 2003, the Division of Diabetes Translation of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has provided ongoing support for an SD model that addresses how best to balance interventions to reduce the present and future health burden of diabetes.  The structure and behavior of this model have evolved, but its results and insights have not changed fundamentally since we first reported on the model three years ago at ISDC 2004.  Yet, considerable effort has gone into various activities these past three years that are gradually widening the model’s circle of impact.  These activities include trimming model scope, challenging and helping to revise a key national objective, facing our model critics, doing more extensive sensitivity tests, conducting an external model review, training model communicators, calibrating the model for various states within the US, and piloting model-based learning laboratories.  In this poster, we will describe these activities and reflect on how and why they have (or, perhaps, in some cases have not) helped move decision-makers toward tangible actions based on model insights.  We will also reflect on how our experiences may inform other efforts to move from insights to action in the arena of public health, where the gap between science and policy is often a challenging one to cross.