Health systems can use electronic health record data to target households rather than just individuals, authors say
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 19, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Diabetes risk is commonly clustered within households, according to a study scheduled to be presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, held from Sept. 15 to 19 in Vienna.
Tainayah Thomas, Ph.D., M.P.H., from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues used electronic health record (EHR) and administrative data to evaluate diabetes risk factors among household members of 356,626 adult patients with prediabetes.
The researchers found that 51.8 percent of the index patients with prediabetes (mean age, 50.5 years) were living in multiresident households, and more than 75 percent of multiresident households had at least one household member with additional diabetes risk factors (364,563 co-residing household members with a mean age of 41.5 years for adult household members and 10.2 years for child household members). Among household members, diabetes risk factors were identified in nearly two-thirds of adults (64.6 percent) and one-third of children (35.0 percent), with overweight/obesity being the most common risk factor present (54.9 percent of adult and 34.1 percent of child household members). Among adult household members, dysglycemia was present in 32.3 percent, with 20.3 percent showing prediabetes lab results and 12 percent having evidence of diabetes.
“All health systems could use this approach as a data-driven strategy to better and more systematically identify people at high risk for diabetes,” Thomas said in a statement. “This strategy could allow health systems to identify and tailor diabetes prevention messaging and programs to entire households instead of just individuals.”
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