13The Diabetes Care Gap Most Women Never Hear About7 min read

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.