What we’ve learned so far in our child diabetes study with 60 responses from mothers of one or more children with type 1 diabetes and children with no chronic health challenges is that there appear to be differences between the groups. Some of you participated at the beginning of this study in March 2025, which I’m conducting with colleague Dr. Tony Madrid.
A big thank you to everyone who participated and helped spread the information!
We received our hoped for 30 responses from mothers for each of these groups and have taken a first look at the data.
This is our initial update on what we’ve learned so far.
The data suggests there is a difference between the 2 groups
Mothers’ responses to the child diabetes survey suggest there is a difference between the early experiences of mothers of a child with type 1 diabetes and early experiences of mothers with a child with no major health challenges.
We hypothesized there would be a difference and this suggests we are looking in a potentially useful direction.
The difference is not as large as we anticipated so we do not yet know if it is a real difference or not.
For this reason we seek to gather additional responses from mothers of children in both groups. This will help us learn if the difference is important or statistically significant. If the difference is “real,” we can then share more information about these differences.
Needing more data and responses is a common outcome in research studies and we hope to have more detailed information for you in the future.
If these early experiences turn out to be more common for children with type 1 diabetes (T1D) or diabetes-related antibodies, we hope to assess whether an approach to treatment that can reverse asthma in children might be helpful for type 1 diabetes.
Next Step: 40 More Responses per Group
The next step of our study is to gather 40 additional responses from mothers in each group. This is the number calculated to clarify if the difference is statistically significant.
This is an approximate number that we anticipate will help us learn if the differences are important.
We updated the survey in December 2025 to include mothers of all children 18 and younger with or without T1D. Children may have other chronic health conditions or no health challenges. We will continue to look for differences between the two groups of children with T1D or with no chronic health conditions and will use the information from experiences of mothers with children living with other health conditions to learn more, including possible other research in the future.
Below are 4 more ways to help advance our study and pediatric T1D research.
Your voice matters. You can help T1D research in 4 Ways
If you would like to further help us advance this type 1 diabetes research study we’d love your help spreading the word about the child diabetes survey. Here are 4 ways to to help us gather the additional responses.
1. Take the survey for more than one child
If you have any other children 18 years old or younger, the extra time you take to respond for more than one child could help us better understand differences and nuances about early life experiences.
We invite you to take the survey if you are a mother 18 years old or older and have
- one or more children 18 years old or younger who:
- live with type 1 diabetes or
- live with 2 or more diabetes-related antibodies
- has no chronic health conditions
- has other chronic health challenges other than type 1 diagetes
Click the button below or scan the QR code in the images to take the survey:
2. Forward this email to mothers such as
- moms that are your friends
- moms of your child’s friends
- moms among your family members
- or to midwives, doulas, pediatricians, obstetricians and others who work or have worked with mothers
3. Share our survey via social media
You can share our survey from an existing post inviting mothers to take the child diabetes survey directly from the blog’s social media pages for
4. Contact Veronique
Contact me if you’d like to recommend anyone or any group who might be interested in sharing or taking our survey, such as
- mothers’ groups on facebook
- mothers’ groups of children with type 1 diabetes
- parent groups on facebook
- or other groups or specific individuals
More about us
My name is Veronique Mead and I am a former therapist and family doctor who was an assistant professor of family medicine at the New Hampshire-Dartmouth Residency Program. My colleague Tony Madrid is a psychologist and former faculty member at the University of San Francisco.
We are members of the nonprofit Redwood Psychology Center. This survey has been approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is an organization that reviews research involving human participants to ensure ethical conduct and participant protection.
You can learn more about us, this study, the research that led us to develop this study and more here.
What would I have to do to be in the study?
To participate in this pediatric type 1 diabetes survey
- You are 18 years old or older
- Your child is 18 years old or younger
- with or without type 1 diabetes
- with or without other chronic health conditions
After taking the survey you will receive a confirmation email
- with the responses you submitted
- with a link to download a PDF for more information
You can take the type 1 diabetes perinatal survey by clicking the button below or scanning the QR code in the images on this page.
The online survey takes about 15 minutes to complete.
Take the Survey:
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