Manage Your Illness

Welcome! Today is Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Who's dealing with chronic illness? People just like you!

The road to a healthy life is one we all must travel, and that road is made more difficult by chronic illness. Manage Your Illness is designed for people who may have a chronic illness such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease, or rheumatoid arthritis. Here you will find information about how you can take control of your own health, and you'll be able to share information on how you personally manage your illness to help others.

Together, we can be partners in giving you the confidence and tools to work as an equal partner with your physician to manage your health.

Recently On MYI:

Self-management support and communication from nurse care managers

Tom Creer, PhD
March 9, 2010 | Discussion (1)

Pain is a critical health problem, with over half of Americans suffering from chronic or recurrent pain. Many patients also experience comorbid depression. Although numerous self-management interventions have been implemented in an effort to improve pain outcomes, little attention has been devoted to the role of the provider of these... See the rest »

An effective self-management program for multiple sclerosis

Tom Creer, PhD
March 8, 2010 | Discussion (1)

A lay-led, community-based intervention, the Chronic Disease Self-Management Course (CDSMC), is effective for a range of long-term health conditions (e.g. arthritis, heart disease). However, the perceived value and experience of the CDSMC for people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has not been examined. A qualitative study conducted by Barlow and colleagues... See the rest »

A three-year follow-up following multifaceted diabetes care intervention

Tom Creer, PhD
March 5, 2010 | Discussion (0)

Piatt and colleagues sought to determine if improvements observed in clinical, behavioral, and psychosocial outcomes measured at 12 months following a multifaceted diabetes care intervention were sustained at 3-year follow-up. The study was a multilevel, nonblinded, cluster design, randomized controlled trial that took place in an underserved suburb of Pittsburgh,... See the rest »

A comparison of patient and physician assessments of weight loss

Tom Creer, PhD
March 4, 2010 | Discussion (0)

Bleich and colleagues examined concordance between patient and physician assessments of patient self-reported use of weight-management activities. They analyzed baseline data from a randomized controlled trial of patient and physician interventions designed to improve patient-physician communication (41 physicians and 274 of their patients). A majority of patients reported regular exercise... See the rest »

Comparing strength training, self-management, and a combination of procedures for early osteoarthritis of the knee

Tom Creer, PhD
March 3, 2010 | Discussion (0)

McKnight and coworkers assessed the relative effectiveness of combining self-management and strength training for improving functional outcomes in patients with early knee osteoarthritis. They conducted a randomized intervention trial lasting 24 months at an academic medical center. Community-dwelling middle-aged adults (n = 273) ages 35-64 years with knee osteoarthritis, pain,... See the rest »

A self-management program for people with a serious mental illness

Tom Creer, PhD
March 2, 2010 | Discussion (0)

People with serious mental illnesses (SMI) have elevated rates of comorbid medical conditions, but may also face challenges in effectively managing those conditions. A study team developed and pilot-tested the Health and Recovery Program (HARP), an adaptation of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) for mental health consumers. A manualized,... See the rest »

Supporting diabetes self-management using medical assistant coaches

Tom Creer, PhD
March 1, 2010 | Discussion (0)

Ruggiero and colleagues evaluated the impact of an intervention that utilized a certified medical assistant with specific diabetes training to work with a multidisciplinary diabetes care team to help provide basic diabetes education and self-care support in low-income minority populations with type 2 diabetes. Enrolled participants were randomized to either... See the rest »

Cognitive performance with self-management in type 2 diabetes

Tom Creer, PhD
February 26, 2010 | Discussion (0)

Compean-Ortiz and colleagues sought to determine the effect of memory learning on self-care activities in adults with type 2 diabetes moderated by previous education/understanding in diabetes. They also wished to explore the explicative capacity of age, gender, schooling, diabetes duration, and glycemic control in memory learning. A descriptive correlation study... See the rest »

Behavioral interventions for the prevention of sexually transmitted infections

Tom Creer, PhD
February 25, 2010 | Discussion (0)

Shepherd and colleagues endeavored to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of schools-based skills-building behavioral interventions to encourage young people to adopt and maintain safer sexual behavior and to prevent them from acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Electronic bibliographic databases (e.g. MEDLINE, MEDLINE In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO,... See the rest »

Physician-directed management of left atrial pressure in chronic heart failure

Tom Creer, PhD
February 24, 2010 | Discussion (0)

Previous studies suggest that management of ambulatory hemodynamics may improve outcomes in chronic heart failure. Ritzema and colleagues conducted a prospective, observational, first-in-human study of a physician-directed patient self-management system targeting left atrial pressure. Forty patients with reduced or preserved left ventricular ejection fraction and a history of New York... See the rest »