Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Some women develop a new diagnosis of diabetes in pregnancy (DIP). It often goes away after delivery but is a sign of high chances of developing diabetes later in their lives. Diabetes can lead to problems like heart disease and stroke. DIP may also be a sign that the children may have higher chances of gaining too much weight and developing diabetes after pregnancy (DAP). Even fathers may be at risk, because of shared health habits. A large study showed that the future changes of developing diabetes after pregnancy can be lowered by helping women eat in a healthier away and become more physically active. However, the women studied had older children; we need ways of helping women and families sooner after pregnancy. One of the problems in these studies is figuring out what to measure in order to sort out what works and what does not. We may have to wait a few years before we can figure out if the strategies tested affected whether or not diabetes developed. There are a lot of other things that can be measured: (e.g., weight, physical activity, attitudes, glucose and insulin levels before and after eating, quality of life); we want to find out which of these is the best signal of programs that work. Some of these may be important early after pregnancy while others may be more important later on. We have made a long list of possible measures. We will collect and review all the studies that have looked at these and summarize the results. We will try to find patterns, like whether some measures seem to work better in certain countries or in certain ethnocultural groups, for example. We will share our findings with a large group of researchers, health care providers, and patients. We will ask them to help us figure out which are the key measures that should be studied. This work will be important to help us and others plan a large multicity international trial that will examine the effect of strategies to reduce the risk for diabetes after pregnancy.