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

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.