A Shared Decision Making Intervention for Diabetes Prevention in Women with a History of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

Our goal is to test whether shared decision making for diabetes prevention can help women with a history of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) who are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2DM) increase weight loss and adoption of evidence based strategies to lower their risk of incident diabetes.

Women with a history of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2DM) but evidence from the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) indicates that lifestyle change and metformin use in this population are clinically equivalent, each reducing the incidence of T2DM by approximately 50%. Shared decision making (SDM) is an attractive approach in this situation where several options are available. We can use a decision aid to make the decision explicit, describe the available options with equipoise, elicit patient preferences, and help patients make an informed decision that is right for them. There are no existing studies evaluating SDM for diabetes prevention among women with a history of GDM. Therefore, this study aims to test the effectiveness of an RCT evaluating SDM for diabetes prevention on weight loss among overweight/obese women with a history of GDM and hemoglobin A1c between 5.7-6.4%, as well as uptake of lifestyle change and/or metformin use and other patient-reported outcomes (e.g., physical activity, eating patterns, patient activation, health-related quality of life). The study will recruit 310 patients from two large health care systems (n=155 from UCLA Health and n=155 from Intermountain Healthcare) who will be randomized to either usual care or in-person shared decision making for diabetes prevention.