Prediabetes awareness marketing faces a difficult challenge: how do you motivate someone to act when they do not feel sick? The CDC and Ad Council’s new “Undo It” campaign offers an interesting answer. Instead of focusing mainly on the future threat of type 2 diabetes, the campaign emphasizes something more immediate and potentially motivating: prediabetes can often be reversed. That small shift turns a warning into an opportunity. For healthcare marketers, it also raises a bigger question. Are we sometimes asking fear to do a job that a sense of control could do better?
Table of Contents
- How prediabetes awareness is moving from risk to agency
- The limits of fear in preventive health marketing
- Why attainable action can improve engagement
- What healthcare marketers can learn from the campaign
- Conclusion
- FAQs
How Prediabetes Awareness Is Moving From Risk to Agency
The CDC and Ad Council launched the latest phase of the long-running Do I Have Prediabetes? campaign in September 2026. Called “Undo It,” the campaign uses familiar situations that cannot be undone and contrasts them with a health condition that may still be changed through early action.
That framing matters because the underlying numbers are serious. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 115 million U.S. adults have prediabetes, and most do not know it. Prediabetes also increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other health problems.
However, lifestyle changes involving physical activity, healthier eating, and weight management can help some people reverse prediabetes or prevent or delay progression to type 2 diabetes.
Traditional prediabetes campaigns could easily lead with those risks. “Undo It,” however, puts the possibility of change at the center of the creative idea.
That distinction gives the audience a role in the story. The person seeing the ad is not simply someone facing a dangerous future. Instead, that person is someone who may still have an opportunity to influence what happens next.
For marketers, this is particularly relevant in disease states where symptoms are absent or easy to ignore. When nothing hurts today, a distant negative outcome may struggle to compete with everything else demanding attention.
As a result, the campaign shifts the conversation from “here is what could happen to you” toward “here is something you can do now.” That may be a small change in language, but it can represent a significant change in how audiences experience a health message.
Fear Can Create Awareness Without Creating Action
Risk communication clearly has a place in healthcare. Patients need accurate information about consequences, disease progression, and the benefits of early intervention. However, more alarming information does not automatically produce more action.
As Pharma Marketing Network has explored in its coverage of patient behavior and the awareness-to-action gap, people can understand a healthcare message and still fail to act. Emotional barriers, complexity, competing priorities, and decision fatigue can interrupt the journey between knowing and doing.
That problem becomes even more pronounced in prevention. Someone who feels healthy must act today to reduce the possibility of something happening months or years later.
Pharma Marketing Network’s analysis of the healthy patient paradox in prevention marketing highlights this challenge. A person without obvious symptoms may have little emotional urgency to make a change, even when the long-term health benefits are clear.
Fear may make the potential consequence memorable. However, it can also leave audiences with a problem that feels large, distant, or difficult to control.
A prediabetes campaign built around reversibility changes that calculation. The risk still exists, but the audience also receives an achievable next step.
In the “Undo It” campaign, that next step is intentionally small: take a one-minute risk test. People who receive a high-risk score are encouraged to speak with a healthcare professional about a blood test to confirm whether they have prediabetes.
That sequence matters. Instead of asking people to overhaul their lives immediately, the campaign first asks them to learn something about their health. For people who want professional medical guidance, resources such as Healthcare.pro can also help them explore options for speaking with a healthcare professional.
“Undo It” Makes the Desired Behavior Feel Attainable
One of the strongest features of the campaign is that it does not ask the audience to transform their entire life immediately.
First, it asks them to learn their risk.
That is a much smaller behavioral commitment than asking someone to imagine losing weight, changing their diet, exercising regularly, or preventing a disease they may not believe they will develop.
From there, the campaign creates a sequence: understand your risk, confirm your status if necessary, and then consider manageable lifestyle changes or a CDC-recognized National Diabetes Prevention Program.
This approach appears to build on a campaign platform with substantial reach. The CDC reports that, over the campaign’s first decade, millions of online and video prediabetes risk tests were completed, while millions of people also visited the campaign website.
Those results do not prove that optimistic framing alone caused people to act. Still, they demonstrate the value of connecting disease awareness creative to a simple and measurable behavior.
That is an important distinction for marketers working on prediabetes awareness. The advertisement does not need to produce complete lifestyle change by itself. Instead, it needs to make the next useful action feel reasonable enough to take.
This is where health behavior messaging can become more effective. When the first action feels manageable, people may be more willing to begin a process that eventually leads to larger changes.
What Pharma Marketers Can Learn From Positive Health Messaging
The broader lesson extends well beyond diabetes.
Healthcare advertising often focuses on what audiences could lose: health, independence, mobility, time, or quality of life. Those consequences can be clinically relevant and emotionally powerful. However, messages built around possibility may deserve equal attention.
Marketers developing disease awareness campaigns can ask a different set of questions. What can the audience still change? What is the smallest meaningful next action? Can the desired behavior be presented as achievable rather than burdensome? Most importantly, does the creative leave people feeling capable of doing something?
This does not mean replacing accurate risk information with vague positivity. Effective healthcare communication still requires balance, clinical accuracy, and realistic expectations.
Instead, the opportunity is to pair seriousness with agency.
The CDC campaign also shows how that strategy can work creatively. “Undo It” is a short idea that turns a medical concept into everyday language. It provides contrast, creates curiosity, and gives the campaign a memorable organizing thought without requiring the audience to understand complicated clinical terminology.
For pharmaceutical brands, health systems, advocacy organizations, and agencies, that may be the most transferable lesson. Strong prevention messaging does not always need to make the future more frightening.
Sometimes, effective patient engagement starts by making action feel more possible.
Conclusion
The “Undo It” campaign represents a useful evolution in how marketers communicate about prediabetes because it reframes prevention around what people may still be able to influence.
The health risk remains clear. Yet the campaign does not stop at telling people what could go wrong. Instead, it quickly moves toward reversibility, a one-minute risk test, and attainable next steps.
For healthcare marketers, that balance is worth studying. Fear can capture attention, but agency can give people somewhere to go with that attention.
When an audience does not yet feel sick, the most motivating message may not be “this could happen to you.” It may be “there is still something you can do about it.”
FAQs
What is the CDC “Undo It” prediabetes campaign?
“Undo It” is the 2026 phase of the CDC and Ad Council’s Do I Have Prediabetes? campaign. It encourages adults to learn their prediabetes risk and emphasizes that early action and lifestyle changes can help reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Why can positive framing work well in prediabetes awareness campaigns?
Positive framing can give audiences a sense of agency. Instead of communicating risk alone, it shows people that an attainable action may help change their health trajectory.
Can prediabetes actually be reversed?
The CDC says lifestyle changes can help some people reverse prediabetes or prevent or delay the development of type 2 diabetes. Individual circumstances differ, so anyone concerned about their risk should discuss testing and appropriate care with a healthcare professional.
What is the call to action in the “Undo It” campaign?
The campaign encourages people to take a brief prediabetes risk test. Those with a high-risk result are advised to speak with a healthcare professional about confirming their status with a blood test.
What can pharma marketers learn from the campaign?
Healthcare marketers can consider balancing risk messages with agency, simple next steps, and attainable actions. The campaign demonstrates how prevention messaging can communicate seriousness without making fear the only emotional reason to respond.
This content is not medical advice. For any health issues, always consult a healthcare professional. In an emergency, call 911 or your local emergency services.
