A woman prepares for her first child, tracking prenatal appointments and baby registries, only to learn her blood sugar numbers have landed her in a category she never anticipated: high-risk pregnancy. She’s far from alone. Gestational diabetes now affects 79 out of every 1,000 births in the United States, and the rate has climbed without pause for nearly a decade.
Northwestern Medicine researchers analyzed over 12 million births between 2016 and 2024, finding that gestational diabetes jumped 36 percent during that span. The condition, which emerges when the body can’t regulate blood sugar properly during pregnancy, increased across every racial and ethnic group tracked in the study. What makes the trend especially concerning is its consistency: year after year, the numbers move in only one direction.
Gestational diabetes isn’t just a temporary inconvenience. It raises immediate risks during delivery and sets up both mother and child for higher rates of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life. The findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, paint a picture of young American adults entering pregnancy in worse metabolic health than previous generations, likely driven by less physical activity, declining diet quality, and rising obesity rates.
Disparities That Demand Explanation
The burden of gestational diabetes falls unevenly. American Indian and Alaska Native women face rates of 137 per 1,000 births. Asian women and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander women see similarly elevated numbers, at 131 and 126 per 1,000 respectively. Hispanic, White, and Black women all recorded lower rates, though still substantial.
Why these gaps exist remains unclear, in part because the populations most affected are also the least represented in medical research. Dr. Nilay Shah, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of cardiology at Northwestern, noted that current prevention strategies clearly aren’t working.
“Gestational diabetes has been persistently increasing for more than 10 years, which means whatever we have been trying to do to address diabetes in pregnancy has not been working,” Shah explains.
The research team used birth certificate data from the National Center for Health Statistics, focusing on first-time mothers carrying single babies. This approach captured a remarkably complete national picture, spanning years before, during, and after the pandemic. The upward trend didn’t waver.
What It Takes to Reverse Course
Emily Lam, a third-year medical student at Northwestern and the study’s first author, pointed out that even within broader categories like Asian or Hispanic populations, there’s significant variation that often gets lost. These details matter when designing interventions that actually reach people.
The research builds on the team’s earlier work covering 2011 to 2019, confirming nearly 15 years of unbroken increases. Shah argues that fixing the problem requires looking beyond the doctor’s office. Public health policy needs to focus on helping people maintain their health long before pregnancy begins, which means ensuring access to quality care and creating conditions where healthy behaviors are actually feasible.
For now, the data make one thing plain: the health of young women in the United States is deteriorating, and the consequences show up most visibly during pregnancy. The question isn’t whether gestational diabetes rates will continue climbing, it’s whether policymakers and health systems will respond with strategies that match the scale of the problem.
JAMA Internal Medicine: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.7055
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