Spreading Self Management Support Spreading Self Management Support funded four health economies to find out more about how to effectively deliver self management support and to share their learning with others

Key Points
- Looked at the impact of self management support, an approach that health services can use to support people with long-term conditions to manage their health and health care even better.
- Supported four health economies from 2013 to 2015.
- Continued funding for sites who had taken part in Co-creating Health.
Self management support has been piloted around the UK, and evaluations have revealed valuable insights into this approach. There are indications that some activities can make a real difference – for example, helping clinical teams to enable and support patients, supporting the patients themselves to become more involved in their care, and redesigning local health services to support this new approach.
Aims
To gain stronger evidence about the impact of self management support and how best to implement it, the Health Foundation funded four health economies that were already engaged in self management support to find out more about how to effectively deliver self management support and to share their learning with others.
The aim was to encourage wider implementation of self management support, to enable people with long-term conditions to achieve better health and a better quality of life.
This work built on that of Co-creating Health, which focused on three areas of activity:
- Helping people with long-term conditions to develop the skills, confidence and support they need to manage their condition.
- Helping clinicians develop skills, knowledge and attitude to support and motivate people with long-term conditions.
- Changing health systems so that they encourage and facilitate self management.
In 2011, the programme entered Phase 2, with continued funding for some of the original sites to spread Co-creating Health and make it sustainable locally.
Projects
During 2013, we funded four of the sites that had already demonstrated a leading commitment, capability and continuous learning approach to actively embedding self management support into routine care.
Through our funding, they did further work to deliver and develop their programme of self management support to build the evidence of what works.
Further reading
Discover
Person-centred care resource centre
Learn about person-centred care with resources from the Health Foundation and around the web.
Programme
Co-creating Health
This programme ran between 2007 and 2012 and involved eight projects that aimed to embed...
Research report
Sustaining and spreading self-management support
This report contains the independent evaluation of the second phase of our Co-creating Health...
Spreading self-management support: Whittington Health
Led by Whittington Health, an NHS integrated care organisation in North London, this project looks at improving care of patients with long-term conditions through self-management support. As well as f...
Spreading self-management support: Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
This project at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust looks at improving care of patients with long-term conditions through self-management support and is developing services spanning te...
Spreading self-management support: Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust
This project at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust is working to spread and embed sustainable self-management support across clinical functions, taking a health economy-wide approach to ...
Spreading self-management support: NHS Ayrshire and Arran
Led by NHS Ayrshire and Arran, this project developing a coordinated, systematic approach to self-management across services so that people are supported to take a more active role in their health and...
Get social
Health Foundation @HealthFdn
COVID-19 has resulted in the need for better support to NHS staff to use #PPE safely. @ImperialNHS introduced a P… https://t.co/hoSMfkH0LT
Follow us on TwitterWork with us
We look for talented and passionate individuals as everyone at the Health Foundation has an important role to play.
View current vacanciesThe Q community
Q is an initiative connecting people with improvement expertise across the UK.
Find out more