The Diabetes Care Gap Most Women Never Hear About
Certain Groups Face Even Bigger Gaps
The care gaps documented in the study are not distributed evenly. The researchers noted that the populations at highest risk for diabetes — younger adults, people with lower incomes, and many racial and ethnic minority groups — also tend to face more barriers to routine preventive services. This means the women most likely to have diabetes are also the women least likely to have reliable access to the full spectrum of care they need. The overlap of chronic condition management and systemic access barriers compounds the risk. Addressing the care gap means accounting for these structural inequities, not just optimizing clinical workflows.
Sexually Transmitted Infection Screening Is an Unstudied Gap
The researchers flagged one area where the data was so sparse it couldn’t support any comparison at all: sexually transmitted infection screening. They found no studies comparing STI screening rates between women with and without diabetes. This absence is notable in two ways. It represents a potential gap in actual care — and it represents a gap in research, meaning no one has been tracking whether this particular service is being provided or withheld. As the authors noted, this is both a care gap and a knowledge gap, and both need to be addressed in future work.
What Women Can Do to Advocate for Themselves
Dr. Narula suggested that women with diabetes can take a more active role in ensuring their preventive care doesn’t get lost. That means keeping track of which screenings are due and when, asking directly whether recommended services have been addressed, and not assuming that a busy specialist visit covered everything that needed to be covered. The presence of a chronic condition doesn’t replace the need for standard preventive services — it adds to it. Knowing what care is recommended by age and health status gives women the information they need to ask the right questions when they’re in the room with a provider.
Why Primary Care Physicians Are the Missing Link
Several physicians interviewed in connection with the study pointed to the same structural solution: a primary care doctor who takes ownership of the full preventive care picture. Dr. Neha Vyas, a primary care physician at Cleveland Clinic, described prevention as the core function of primary care — the bread and butter of what those visits are for. For women with diabetes who primarily see specialists, adding a primary care relationship creates a dedicated point of accountability for screenings, counseling, and the full range of recommended services. It doesn’t resolve every system-level problem, but it closes one of the most common routes through which care gets missed.