When is social support important? The association of family support and professional support with specific diabetes self-management behaviors.

Background: Social support is associated with better diabetes self-management behavior (SMB), yet interventions to increase family and friend support (FF support) have had inconsistent effects on SMB.

Objective: To test whether FF support differentially affects specific SMBs and compare the influence of support from health professionals and psychological factors on specific SMBs to that of FF support.

Design: Cross-sectional survey of people with diabetes recruited for a self-management intervention

Participants And Setting: One hundred sixty-four African-American and Latino adults with diabetes living in inner-city Detroit

Measurements And Main Results: For every unit increase in FF support for glucose monitoring, the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of completing testing as recommended was 1.