Impact of family‐centered tailoring of pediatric diabetes self‐management resources

BACKGROUND: The American Diabetes Association recommends a family‐centered approach that addresses each family's specific type 1 diabetes self‐management barriers. OBJECTIVE: To assess an intervention that tailored delivery of self‐management resources to families' specific self‐management barriers. SUBJECTS: At two sites, 214 children 8‐16 years old with type 1 diabetes and their parent(s) were randomized to receive tailored self‐management resources (intervention, n = 106) or usual care (n = 108). METHODS: Our intervention (1) identified families' self‐management barriers with a validated survey, (2) tailored self‐management resources to identified barriers, and (3) delivered the resources as four group sessions coordinated with diabetes visits. Mixed effects models with repeated measures were fit to A1c as well as parent and child QOL during the intervention and 1 year thereafter. RESULTS: Participants were 44% youth (8‐12 years) and 56% teens (13‐16 years). No intervention effect on A1c or QOL was shown, combining data from sites and age groups. Analyzing results by site and age group, post‐intervention A1c for teens at one site declined by 0.06 more per month for intervention teens compared to usual care (P < 0.05). In this group, post‐intervention A1c declined significantly when baseline A1c was >8.5 (−0.08, P < 0.05), with an even larger decline when baseline A1c was >10 (−0.19, P < 0.05). In addition, for these teens, the significant improvements in A1c resulted from addressing barriers related to motivation to self‐manage. Also at this site, mean QOL increased by 0.61 points per month more during the intervention for parents of intervention youth than for usual care youth (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Tailored self‐management resources may improve outcomes among specific populations, suggesting the need to consider families' self‐management barriers and patient characteristics before implementing self‐management resources.