Managing blood glucose levels is a critical part of living well with type 2 diabetes but it can be difficult for many people.

In fact, studies have shown that around half of all Australians have difficulty achieving their recommended HbA1c targets. One important factor in this is people not taking diabetes medication as prescribed.

Now, thanks to a grant from the Diabetes Australia Research Program, the University of Sydney’s Dr Crystal Lee is trying to identify factors that are related to people not taking medication as regularly as they should.

“Blood glucose lowering medications are an integral part of managing blood glucose levels, yet, according to a small-scale survey conducted in New South Wales, a third of the respondents were not taking their medications as regularly as they should,” Dr Lee said.

“I’ll be using a number of different datasets joined together to identify any patterns of people who aren’t taking their medication as often as they are recommended.

“This may help us work out whether this issue is more common in men or women, people of a certain age or socio-economic background.

“Hopefully we will be able to get a better understanding of the impact of this as well. I’m really interested in understanding whether or not taking medication as often as prescribed leads to decreased hospitalisations and deaths.”

Dr Lee thanked Diabetes Australia for funding diabetes research.

“We need to understand how best to keep people healthy and out of hospital and the Diabetes Australia Research Program helps ensure Australia’s diabetes researchers can continue to do their important work.”