It is rare for parents to find health education programs that educate them to address their child's chronic illness in the context of normal family life, manage their own reactions and emotions to the illness and the specific care activities they, as parents, may need to implement. For example, they need to educate their child to become an active partner in shared management of the condition, and enhance the family's overall quality of life. The long-term goal of this research is to strengthen abilities of parents to manage the complexities of their child's chronic illness, thereby improving their own and ultimately their child's health.
The specific aim of this application is to test a parent psycho-educational program for impact on parental: self-efficacy to manage their child's chronic illness, ability to involve their child in developmentally appropriate shared management, coping behavior, emotional health, and perceived family quality of life. The seven-session program (2 hours per week) will be developed and provided to parents of children who have a chronic illness and are between 3 and 11 years of age. Program methods include brief presentations of key concepts, focused discussions and skills modeling, problem solving, and assignments for out of session practice of newly learned skills. The program builds on the foundations of a successfully tested and nationally implemented adult chronic illness self-management program, but integrates additional concepts deemed essential by parents of children living with chronic illnesses. A total of 30 parents will be involved in refinement and pilot testing activities. A maximum of 328 parents will be recruited to participate and be randomly assigned to one of 14 intervention (164 parents) or fourteen control (164 parents) groups. Parents (both control and intervention) will respond to mailed outcome measurement tools before the program begins, immediately upon completion of the program (intervention group only for specific program evaluation reasons) and at 6 and 12 months after the program has ended. A time series analysis approach to compare differences in before program, short term (6 month), and long-term (12 month) outcomes between the treatment and control groups will be implemented. Results of this research will provide guidance to the design of future education efforts for parents of children with chronic illnesses.
| Churchill, Shervin S; Kieckhefer, Gail M (2018) One Year Follow-up of Outcomes from the Randomized Clinical Trial of the Building on Family Strengths Program. Matern Child Health J 22:913-921 |
| Kieckhefer, Gail M; Trahms, Cristine M; Churchill, Shervin S et al. (2014) A randomized clinical trial of the building on family strengths program: an education program for parents of children with chronic health conditions. Matern Child Health J 18:563-74 |
| Churchill, Shervin S; Villareale, Nanci L; Monaghan, Teresa A et al. (2010) Parents of children with special health care needs who have better coping skills have fewer depressive symptoms. Matern Child Health J 14:47-57 |
| Kieckhefer, Gail M; Trahms, Cristine M; Churchill, Shervin S et al. (2009) Measuring parent-child shared management of chronic illness. Pediatr Nurs 35:101-8, 127 |
