Study design (if review, criteria of inclusion for studies)
Systematic review
Participants
Children and young people with asthma or cystic fibrosis or diabetes.
Interventions
Self-care support interventions
Outcome measures
Health status, psycho-social well-being, condition-related knowledge, health service use and participant satisfaction.
Main results
The search strategy identified 4261 papers which were screened against the review inclusion criteria. A total of 194 papers were assessed as being potentially eligible for inclusion with 15 papers being judged as adequate to include in the review. There is strong evidence of the effectiveness of interventions that target children/young people; use e-health or group-based methods; that are delivered in community settings. There is no evidence that interventions that focus on parents alone or are delivered only in hospital settings are effective.
Authors' conclusions
While there is some evidence to inform the development of self-care support programmes, there is a need for well-designed trials of interventions that are feasible to transfer into real-life settings and which involve parents and children in their development.