Uncovering Preventive Care Gaps in Reproductive-Age Women With Diabetes, With Lauren Wisk, PhD

Preventive and reproductive health care remain critical yet underdelivered components of longitudinal care for reproductive-age women living with diabetes. Across chronic conditions more broadly, younger patients frequently report unmet needs in core areas such as contraceptive counseling, preconception counseling, and cancer screening, even while they remain engaged in specialty or primary care. For women with diabetes, these gaps are particularly concerning given the elevated risks associated with pregnancy, cardiovascular disease, and malignancy in this population. Ensuring systematic delivery of “well-woman” services is therefore foundational to high-quality chronic disease care.

In this context, a comprehensive review of the literature was conducted to clarify the magnitude and consistency of preventive care gaps in reproductive-age women with diabetes. The review synthesized evidence on several essential services expected in routine care: contraceptive counseling and prescribing, preconception counseling, cervical and breast cancer screening, and screening for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). After screening thousands of abstracts and full-text articles, 44 studies met strict inclusion and exclusion criteria, allowing for meaningful comparisons between women with and without diabetes across diverse care settings and health systems.

Lauren Wisk, PhD, led this work focusing on adolescents and young adults growing up with pediatric-onset and other chronic health conditions, and her review consistently found that women with diabetes were less likely to receive each of these core preventive services than their peers without diabetes. These disparities were observed not only in US-based studies but also in international cohorts, suggesting a global pattern rather than a system-specific anomaly. In this interview, Wisk explains how these findings emerged from prior qualitative work in which young people repeatedly described unmet preventive and reproductive care needs, prompting a rigorous, quantitative assessment of the scope of the problem.

References:

1. Treasure ML, Nourbakhsh PS, Diaz Roldan K, et al. Preventive Health Services in Reproductive-Aged Women with Diabetes Mellitus: A Scoping Review. J Gen Intern Med. Published online April 2, 2026. doi:10.1007/s11606-026-10253-5
2. University of California, Los Angeles Health Sciences. Women with Diabetes Less Likely to Receive Preventive Care and Some Screenings. News release. April 3, 2026. Accessed Ap