Learning teens’ stories can help them succeed with T1D

Lori Laffel, M.D., M.P.H. (Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, MA), a JDRF funded researcher and Research Advisory Committee member, focuses on helping children, adolescents and young adults with type 1 diabetes (T1D) take good care of themselves. A respected endocrinologist with extensive experience, Dr. Laffel has learned that the first step in T1D treatment is to listen. “I can’t begin addressing the diabetes until I get the life story of the patient,” she said during a panel discussion on psychosocial management of diabetes during the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, LA, this week. Listen to teens involved with JDRF’s Louisiana chapter tell some of their stories in this video.

To learn life stories like these, Dr. Laffel and her colleagues incorporate assessments of psychosocial well-being into many of their JDRF-funded studies. This has helped them to link certain psychosocial factors with teens’ success in managing T1D. They shared the findings with the diabetes research community at the ADA conference.

Executive function is a set of mental skills like planning, organization, memory, time management and flexible thinking that people use to get things done. Dr. Laffel’s team found that in teens better executive function scores correlated with better diabetes management scores, as well as fewer depressive symptoms, and these translated to real reductions in hemoglobin A1C.

Dr. Laffel’s group also looked at major life events among teens, challenges like hospitalization of a family member, low grades on a report card or serious arguments between parents. They reported that teens who experienced fewer major life events tended to have better quality of life as well as better treatment adherence scores and higher self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is a measure of a confidence in one’s ability to manage a challenge. Dr. Laffel and her collaborators developed a survey tool to evaluate self-efficacy as it pertains to diabetes management in teens. Higher scores on this survey were related to greater treatment adherence and less burden of T1D.

These and other measures may be useful to researchers and clinicians in helping teens manage T1D successfully, thus improving their overall well-being. In Dr. Laffel’s words, “I feel privileged to hear about our patients’ lives… so we can work together to try to optimize diabetes outcomes.”

Why It Matters

Understanding teens’ personal stories can lead to better T1D management and better health outcomes.

Connect

Join JDRF’s social network at typeonenation.org to share your story with others in the T1D community.