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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1211
igaa057.1211
Abstracts
Session 2948 (Poster)
Health Promotion and Well-Being I
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Undiagnosed Diabetes: Identifying the Community Paths to Type 2 Diabetes Diagnostic Testing
Chard Sarah 1 Girling Laura 2 Henderson Loren 1 Eckert J Kevin 1 1 
UMBC, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
2 
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”376 376
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Over seven million U.S. adults are estimated to have undiagnosed diabetes and are at heightened risk of diabetes complications and poorer long-term glycemic control. Key to addressing undiagnosed diabetes is identifying how persons encounter diabetes testing in everyday life and the contextual factors that lead to consulting a health care provider. As part of the NIA-funded Subjective Experience of Diabetes Study we examined the pathways through which community-living African-American and non-Hispanic White older adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) (N=75) received their T2D diagnosis. Systematic, thematic analyses using ATLAS.ti reveals three primary routes to diabetes diagnosis: diagnosis through continuity of primary care, diagnosis through happenstance testing, and diagnosis following the exacerbation of symptoms. While diagnosis as part of routine care was the least reported (N=13), participants’ accounts suggest diagnosis in primary care validates the patient-provider relationship and provides an occasion to calmly establish a treatment plan. More frequently, however, diagnosis occurs through fortuitous encounters with glucose tests, e.g., through work or community research projects (N=15) or after symptoms become alarming and disrupt daily life (N=47). Participants’ experiences in these latter two categories reveal the critical role of insurance and social prompts in the decision to consult a clinical provider regarding symptoms. At the same time, the abundance of over-the-counter therapies treating conditions commonly found early in the emergence of diabetes can delay clinical follow up. These findings highlight the importance of social prompts and community-based testing in the fight to reduce undiagnosed diabetes.