Strategies to Improve Well-Being and Diabetes Management

Study Summary

This project aims to implement an adapted self-affirmation intervention among a population of individuals with diabetes to reduce the negative psychosocial impacts of stigma. In a self-affirmation, participants are guiding through a writing exercise writing designed to reinforce sources of self-worth before they encounter or engage in stressful or stigmatizing events. Participants in this study will be asked to complete self-affirmation exercises before their 3-month wellness appointments with their endocrinologists over the course of a year. The main questions the investigators are asking are: * Will self-affirmation reduce feelings of stigmatization? * Will self-affirmation increase self-efficacy and motivation to engage in condition management behaviors. * Will self-affirmation improve blood glucose control. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the intervention condition or a waitlist control condition. Participants in the waitlist control condition will also complete writing exercises but they will be abbreviated (this in the psychological literature is referred to as a "low affirmation condition"). At the end of the study, waitlist control participants will have access to the full exercise should they like to receive it. After each appointment and self-affirmation, participants will complete surveys assessing feelings of stigma and motivation to engage in condition management. All participants will already be using continuous glucose monitors. The investigators will compare both survey responses and continuous glucose data between our conditions to assess the efficacy of the self-affirmation intervention.

Primary Outcome

Used to assess participants' concerns about experiencing diabetes-specific stigma-induced identity threat while receiving care for T2D. A 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree) Likert response scale is used for all items. A composite score is created by summing all items. Higher values indicate greater social identity threat concerns.

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Self-Affirmation

Study Locations (1)