Diabetes: Clinical guidelines and practice resources
Comprehensive resources for family physicians to identify, manage and treat diabetes.
Diabetes remains one of the most common chronic conditions managed in family medicine, affecting more than 38 million people in the United States—many don’t even know they have it. Early identification, consistent monitoring, and evidence-based management are essential to preventing complications and improving long-term health outcomes.
This page provides family physicians with practical, evidence-informed resources to support diabetes prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Explore tools to guide screening, patient education, lifestyle interventions, and medication management, helping you deliver comprehensive, patient-centered care across the continuum of diabetes management.
Clinical preventive service recommendations
The USPSTF recommends screening for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes in adults aged 35 to 70 who have overweight or obesity. Clinicians should offer or refer patients with prediabetes to effective preventive interventions.
The USPSTF recommends screening for gestational diabetes in asymptomatic pregnant persons at 24 weeks of gestation or after. The USPSTF concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for gestational diabetes in asymptomatic pregnant persons before 24 weeks of gestation.
Type 1 diabetes: diagnosis and management
Early detection and monitoring of presymptomatic Type 1 Diabetes can help reduce the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis, enable timely interventions and improve long-term outcomes.
These evidence-based tools and resources for your clinic and local community will empower family physicians to implement a community-wide awareness campaign aimed at educating the public about the signs and symptoms of type 1 diabetes, emphasizing the importance of early detection and highlighting available screening options.
Clinical tools and resources
Type 1 diabetes vs. type 2 diabetes
Type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes present with similar symptoms, but the differences highlighted in Table 1 can help inform accurate diagnosis and classification and optimal disease management, leading to better outcomes for your patients.
A stepwise EHR approach
By taking the practical steps in this guide, your primary care practice can use its EHR system to integrate type 1 diabetes screening into existing clinical workflows.
Helping patients understand next steps
Shared decision-making helps health care professionals provide personalized, collaborative and emotionally supportive patient care. This approach helps patients who are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and their families understand its complexity, consider available care and management options, express their values and preferences, and feel empowered to manage a lifelong condition.
A step-by-step guide
This tool helps family doctors connect patients with local social services for food, housing, transportation, jobs, and legal or financial support. Patients can also use a version of the tool themselves at Family Doctor by findhelp to discover needed services independently.
Educational toolkit for community workshops
Use the guide and the accompanying Power Point presentation to facilitate an educational workshop in your local community.
- Workshop facilitator guide
- Workshop presentation
- For physician and care team attendee handouts, use the clinical resources above.
- For patients, visit familydoctor.org for type 1 diabetes fact sheets and conversation guides that can be distributed in your practice or at a local community workshop.
Featuring talking points, a news release, social media posts, flyer options and various versions of ads, the customizable resources in this toolkit include elements needed to organize and promote your own type 1 diabetes community awareness campaign.
Download the full campaign (campaign will be downloaded as a .zip file)
Inside Family Medicine Podcast
In this episode, Dr. Sean Oser talks about the role family physicians play in managing Type 1 Diabetes. Dr. Oser, an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Director of the Practice Innovation Program, shares his personal experience living with Type 1 Diabetes and insights into advanced diabetes technologies, screening protocols, and addressing health disparities. The discussion includes the importance of early detection, patient communication, and integrating the latest technological advancements into primary care settings to improve diabetes management.
Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) can transform diabetes care, but integrating it into your practice takes planning. From identifying the right patients to navigating insurance and streamlining workflows, there’s a lot to consider. Learn how to identify eligible patients, navigate coverage, order CGM devices and support documentation and workflows in your practice.
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