(107) Assessing Challenges to Disease Management in the Daily Lives of Youth with Type 1 Diabetes: Pilot and Feasibility Study

Background: Over 81% of youth with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have reported facing challenges to diabetes care (e.g., lack of social support, difficulty calculating insulin dose) and these challenges have been shown to be related to worse glycemic control. Although past literature highlights the importance of challenges to T1D, most previous work assessed this at a single timepoint in a research setting using one-time surveys or interviews. This single “snapshot” frequency of testing can thwart our ability to fully understand T1D care challenges because of recall bias and an inability to assess how challenges change throughout the day.

Objectives: In this study, we assessed short-term challenges to diabetes management in youth with T1D, 9-16 years old, in near real-time using a smartphone program in daily life.

Design/Methods: Participants (n=7) were asked to complete a short survey 4 times per day on a smartphone for 10 days. The survey focused on 3 broad challenge categories: insulin/blood sugar levels, food, and support. The purpose of our analysis was to measure adherence to the smartphone surveys, assess what challenges youth are reporting most often, assess whether reported challenges change throughout the day, and explore relationships between perceived challenges to T1D care and contextual factors in daily life (e.g., mood, recent activities, presence of support persons).

Results:

Conclusions: