GRANDPARENTHOOD STATUS AND HEALTH OUTCOMES IN MIDLIFE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES

tus and determine the relationship between grandparenthood status, metabolic control, and psychosocial factors in African American women with type 2 diabetes. Methods: A secondary, descriptive, explorato-ry analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between grandparenting status, physiologic indices related to metabolic con-trol (body mass index, hemoglobin A1c, systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol) and psychosocial factors (emotion-al distress and quality of life) in a sample of 109 urban midlife African American women with type 2 diabetes. Results: Grandmothers made up 60 % of the sample and were stratified into three groups on the basis of caretaking status. Grandmothers who cared for but did not live with grandchil-dren had the highest body mass index, hemoglobin A1c, low-density lipoprotein cho-lesterol, and systolic blood pressure. Caregiving grandmothers also had higher diabetes-related emotional distress scores but had better quality of life scores than did the non-caretaking grandmothers. Non-grandmothers had the lowest quality of life scores. Conclusions: These findings suggest relation-ships between grandmother caretaking status and metabolic and psychosocial factors. Re-search is needed to further examine these relationships and implications on practice an