Paper on Patient-Led Assessment for Network Support (PLANS) published
Our People with Long Term Conditions (Patients) Research Theme are celebrating after the publication of another research paper.
The paper, entitled ‘Linking people with long-term health conditions to healthy community activities: development of Patient-Led Assessment for Network Support (PLANS)’ has been published in Health Expectations. It combines insights from service users with long-term conditions to assist the development of a community referral intervention designed to promote engagement and improve access to health-relevant resources.
The paper looks at how participation in meaningful activity has been associated with positive health benefits, discusses how strategies to promote access to community activities have shown some potential to improve outcomes for people with long-term conditions, and goes on to investigate the need to develop an engagement and referral intervention in partnership with service users and community groups as part of mainstream self-care support.
This research helped to inform a tool (PLANS) to tailor access to types of community-based resources which can support long-term condition management. The team found that understanding the everyday challenges of living with a long-term condition highlighted the importance of connecting and engaging with localised support for people. In response to this, they developed an intervention (PLANS) which tailors access to local resources based on personal preferences, needs and acceptability to encourage service users to engage with sustainable health choices.
Read the research paper in full and find out more about the PLANS study. For more information please contact Dr Christian Blickem.
Date Published: 17/06/2013