| Description |
With a staggering 537 million adults living with type 2 diabetes (T2D) as of 2021, T2D has become one of the most prevalent chronic conditions in the world. Lowering this prevalence is possible as T2D is preventable through healthy lifestyle habits, even amongst people with an increased risk due to their family history. However, survey studies find that most adults susceptible to T2D vastly underestimate their risk, with many not making the lifestyle changes required to help prevent or delay the disease. Generally, research on the relationship between family history and T2D is limited to the simple presence or absence of the disease in a family and fails to investigate the social and environmental complexities within families that may contribute to this increased prevalence. Consequently, this study aimed to research some previously unexplored aspects of familial communication about T2D and how these communications are related to attitudes and beliefs about T2D, emotional responses to the disease, risk perceptions, and health behaviors among young adults with a family history of T2D. Exploratory interviews were conducted with 31 young adults with at least one parent with T2D and no personal diagnosis of diabetes to understand how at-risk young adults think about and discuss T2D in their families. Participants (M age = 21.93, SD = 2.71, range 18 - 27; 58.1% male; 58.1% Black, 19.4% White, 12.9% Hispanic, 6.5% Asian) were recruited for the study through the University of Utah undergraduate participant pool and Facebook research participant groups. Analyses were conducted with coded interview responses to identify patterns in familial conversations about T2D iii (as reported by participants) and participants' feelings and beliefs about T2D, their perceived risk, health behaviors, and more. All participants reported discussing T2D with their families to some extent, and the frequency of discussion within families (M = 2.81, SD = 1.17) was significantly greater than outside of families (M = 1.29, SD = 1.17, t(30) = 10.6, p < .001), indicating that families are a common vector of health communication for at-risk individuals. Most participants reported negative feelings when thinking (90.3%) or talking (87.1%) about T2D, including high-arousal emotions like anger and worry, with the highest proportion of negative emotions co-occurring with conversations about diet (59.3%), followed by prevention (44.4%), and exercise (33.3%). Despite this, no participants reported a desire to decrease conversations about T2D, indicating either a general appreciation for how much their family discussed the condition or a desire for more. While negative emotions did not seem to deter participants' desire for conversations about T2D, they appeared to be an obstacle to having them. Twenty-one participants reported one or more challenge(s) in discussing T2D with their families, with the most cited reason being the conversation becoming too emotional (52.4%). Additionally, participants generally found discussions about T2D helpful (71.0%), mainly when conversations were framed both positively and negatively. Based on the participants' reported reasons, having both framings may be perceived as most effective because it utilizes multiple perspectives to provide more arguments to support preventative health behaviors. Specifically, participants reported that framing focused on the adverse outcomes of T2D helped increase their motivation to prevent T2D while framing concentrated on the positive effects of good health was encouraging. |
