Active clinical trials for "Chronic Disease"

Trimodal prehabilitation consists of a short-term (~ four to six weeks) preventive intervention to: i) enhance aerobic capacity and daily physical activity; ii) nutritional optimization; and, iii) psychological support before a major surgical procedure. The final aim of prehabilitation is to decrease surgical complications and speed-up postoperative functional recovery.

Purpose: A growing number of families with children are dealing with chronic illnesses or health problems that places increased demand on the family. Nurses are in a core position to support and empower these families. The benefit of therapeutic conversation between nurses and families dealing with health problems have shown positive results and therefore received increasing attention. The aim of this study was to evaluate the benefits of two sessions of the Family Strength Oriented Therapeutic Conversation (FAM-SOTC) intervention, offered by advanced practice nurses (APN), for parents of children and adolescents with Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), epilepsy, diabetes, and with sleep disturbance with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Design: The effectiveness of the intervention was tested within a quasi-experimental study with one group pre- and-posttest design. Method: The intervention was based on the Calgary family assessment and intervention models and the Illness Beliefs model and was offered in March 2015--December 2016. Parents (N=31) at the Children's Hospital at the National University Hospital of Iceland, got two sessions of the FAM-SOTC intervention focusing on emotional support, evidence based information and recommendations and on the strengths of family members.

The objectives of this project are to to build sustainable regional communities of Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities (IDD) stakeholders to provide ongoing input to research priorities, methodological processes, and relevant person-centered health outcomes; leverage existing Special Olympic infrastructure to nationally disseminate the toolkit in order to increase participation and engagement in research and improve health outcomes; conduct comparative effectiveness trials that incorporate people with IDD focusing on their research priorities.

1.0 SUMMARY Most Canadian nursing home (NH) residents are elderly and frail, have multiple chronic health conditions and impairments, and have dementia. In 2014, 244,000 Canadians lived in NHs, including 6% of those ≥65 y.o., at a cost of >$10 billion/yr. NH residents experience high rates of acute illness; approximately 33% have emergency department (ED) visits and 23% are hospitalized yearly. Many of these visits are avoidable, and expose residents to iatrogenic complications. In Manitoba >1.5% of NH residents are admitted to intensive care units yearly, where they receive highly aggressive care. Approximately 30-50% of NH residents die each year, experiencing a progressive burden of severe symptoms leading up to death. Thus, there are serious concerns about Advance Care Planning (ACP) and end-of-life (EOL) care in NHs. Canadians in general have mediocre knowledge of, and engagement in ACP. Also, studies show that values such as quality of life and aversion to being dependent trump survival in determining care preferences. Among hospitalized octogenarians, 61% desired comfort care only, or just a brief trial of aggressive care. A U.S. study found that decisions for LTC residents to be sent to ED were frequently driven by families who felt unprepared for their loved ones' death, and insecure about the quality of NH care, where there had been little or no discussion about ACP. Systematic approaches to ACP in NHs have demonstrated benefits, including: increases in ACP uptake, higher compliance with EOL wishes, higher satisfaction with care and emotional well-being, reduced family stress and anxiety, and lower rates of hospitalization. Generally, multimodal ACP interventions have shown the most benefits. Thus, ACP can improve outcomes for NH residents, their families, and society. The goal of this proposal is to apply best practices in ACP, and demonstrate that it can be implemented it in a scalable, sustainable way across provinces. This will result from delivering the ACP intervention within the existing envelope of NH staffing, and by acquiring most of the data from the Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI), which is completed quarterly for NH residents in 9 provinces. As RAI contains information identifying NH residents at the highest risk for dying within 6-12 months, it will be used to target the ACP intervention to such individuals.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that around 35% of women and 29% of men are affected by chronic conditions and this percentage is clearly influenced by specific risk factors, such as lifestyle indicators. The high prevalence of chronic conditions put a large burden on national budgets. The healthcare costs of chronic conditions reach 6.8% of GDP in some European countries. The economic factors are also conditioning the individuals' lifestyles, including their concerns about health and self-care as a part of their way of life. the most educated patients suffering from a chronic disorder have often better skills to manage their conditions and therefore, show better health indicators than those less educated or with lowest socioeconomic status. In addition, the former are normally more interested in participating in community-based interventions, training programmes and research actions. Thus, the impact of interventions targeted to increase self-management skills and improve health condition of individuals with chronic diseases could be extremely higher in those individuals with education and socioeconomic vulnerability traits. Several health education programs have shown positive effects in the self-management of chronic disease. The Chronic Disease Self-Management Programme is a program based on empowering people with chronic diseases to manage and control their disease. This program has been used in several countries over the past twenty years and its effectiveness has been widely demonstrated. However, this programme has not been specifically offered to people in situations of socio-economic vulnerability. The implementation of the EFFICHRONIC project, in five European countries with different health systems and socio-economic contexts, will validate the effectiveness of this program with vulnerable people with chronic diseases. Indeed, the investigators believe that the benefit of interventions aimed at increasing self-management skills and improving the health status of people with chronic diseases could be greater for people with socio-economic vulnerability characteristics.

The study is a gardening intervention among 150 older cancer survivors and individuals living with chronic disease (cardiovascular disease and diabetes) in the states of Alabama and Mississippi. This program focuses on 15 counties where a Community Health Advisor training program is in place (Bullock, Calhoun, Dallas Madison, Marengo, Monroe, Sumter, Talladega, Walker Counties in Alabama and Boliver, Granada, Humphrey, Panola, Sunflower, and Yazoo Counties in Mississippi). Participants are paired with Cooperative Extension certified Master Gardeners to plant a vegetable garden at their place of residence (the intervention). Baseline, midpoint, and 1 year follow up will occur. Previous pilot work provides an established relationship with the Cooperative Extension as well as training mechanisms for the Master Gardeners.

Background: Persons living with chronic conditions often have decreased ability to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADL) tasks, stressing a need to develop and evaluate intervention programs addressing decreased ADL ability. Guided by the British Medical Research Council's guidance (MRC) on how to develop and evaluate complex interventions, the program "A Better everyday LifE" (ABLE), a home-based intervention program, was developed and feasibility tested. The current phase concerns a full-scale evaluation of the ABLE program including evaluation of effectiveness, processes and cost-effectiveness. Material and Methods: The design involves a randomized controlled trial, initiated with an internal pilot. The study will include eighty (n=80) home dwelling persons living with chronic conditions, experiencing problems performing ADL. Participants are randomized to either intervention (ABLE) or control (usual care). Co-primary outcomes are self-reported ADL ability measured using ADL-Questionnaire (ADL-Q) and observed ADL motor ability measured using Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS). Secondary outcomes are perceived satisfaction with ADL task performance measured using ADL-Q; observed ADL process ability measured using AMPS; and Goal Attainment measured using Goal-Attainment-Scaling (GAS). Data is collected at baseline, post intervention and six months after baseline. Process evaluation data are collected using registration forms and semi-structured qualitative interviews. The economic evaluation will be performed from a health care sector perspective with 6 months follow-up. Costs will be estimated based on micro costing and national registries. Effects will be Quality Adjusted Life Years and changes in AMPS ADL ability.

Children with acute and chronic illness undergo frequent, painful, and distressing procedures. This randomized control trial was used to evaluate the effectiveness of guided imagery (GI) vs virtual reality (VR) on the procedural pain and state anxiety of children and young adults undergoing un-sedated procedures. We explored the role of trait anxiety and pain catastrophizing in intervention response.

The overall aims of this project are to: 1) create a developmentally appropriate interactive educational website for adolescents called DigiKnowIt News: Teen, and 2) examine the feasibility of DigiKnowIt News: Teen in a small randomized control trial with adolescents.

This study is testing a navigation program for early palliative care provided in tandem with HIV primary care for persons living with HIV (PLWH) who are at high risk or mortality and morbidity related to their co-morbid chronic conditions. Participants are enrolled for a period of 36 months, with data collection at enrollment and every 9 months after, for a total of 5 data collection time points. Study participants enrolled will be randomized into one of two groups: control or intervention. Control group participants will receive control calls in between survey data collection time points. Intervention group participants will participate in a Navigation Program which includes home visits and phone calls with an advanced practice nurse (APN) and licensed social worker (LSW), as well as visits / calls by a volunteer if desired. The frequency of visits / calls will be determined based on level of need (high, medium or low). The specific aims of the study are to: 1) identify needs and preferences for palliative care and advance care planning for PLWH, in order to tailor an existing Navigation Program for this study; 2) test the effectiveness of an HIV Navigation Program intervention on outcomes of quality of life, symptom burden, coping ability, and advance care planning; and 3) determine if effectiveness of the HIV Navigation Program intervention differs by age, gender, ethnicity, education, income level, and level of palliative care service need.