Racial/Ethnic Differences in Type 2 Diabetes Diagnosis among Women with Gestational Diabetes: Creation of a Diverse Population-Based Eight-Year Postpartum Diabetes Cohort

Background: Women with gestational diabetes (GDM) are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a leading cause of premature morality. While data suggest racial/ethnic minority women bear the disproportionate burden of gestational diabetes, current postpartum GDM cohorts lack adequate diversity to examine whether racial/ethnic disparities persist in the transition to type 2 diabetes. To address this gap, we make use of two NYC public health surveillance databases to construct a novel population-based cohort of women with gestational diabetes and their progression to diabetes diagnosis. Methods: We used a systematic matching process to identify unique cases of women who gave birth between 2009 and 2011 and diabetes diagnosis (two A1c results6.5%) in the following 8 years using linked NYC vital statistics and HbA1c registry data. Results: Of 16,231 women with gestational diabetes, the cumulative incidence of diabetes in 8 years of follow-up was 14.4% (N=2,333 cases) in the overall cohort, 21.1% among non-Hispanic Black women, 15.9% among Hispanic women, 12.3% among Asian women, and 6.1% among non-Hispanic white women. Using this diverse cohort, future analyses will examine racial/ethnic differences in disease progression (e.g., from diabetes to glycemic control) among women with gestational diabetes, which has not been well studied in prior cohorts. Conclusions: This study makes use of diverse public health surveillance data to construct a population-based postpartum cohort of pregnant women to produce pioneering evidence of diabetes disease progression (using HbA1c levels) following pregnancies complicated by GDM. Future research will leverage this novel cohort to investigate how social determinants influence lifecourse racial-ethnic disparities in diabetes. Disclosure T. Janevic: None. K. J. Mccarthy: None. J. J. Kennedy: None. H. Chan: None. G. Van wye: None. V. L. Mayer: None. S. H. Liu: None. M. Huynh: None. Funding National Institutes of Health (R21DK122266)