Patient and Family Participation in Clinical Guidelines Development: The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Experience

Patient and family participation in guideline development is neither standardized nor uniformly accepted in the guideline development community, despite the 2011 Institute of Medicine’s Guidelines We Can Trust and the Guideline International Network’s GIN-Public Toolkit recommendations. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has included patients and/or family members directly in guideline development since 2004. Over time, various strategies for increasing patient and family member participation have been implemented. Surveys of recent patient/family and clinical guidelines committee members have shown that inclusion of individuals with cystic fibrosis and their family members on guidelines committees has provided insight otherwise invisible to clinicians.