Internet Chronic Disease Self-Management Program for Australia

Overview

The Internet Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (ICDSMP) is a pilot study of our existing, previous approved, Chronic Disease Self-Management Program Online. The online programme will be offered to 300 people with chronic disease in South Australia and evaluated for effectiveness, as well as satisfaction of both the South Australian peer facilitators and the participants with chronic disease. All participants will be recruited by the State of South Australia, after which they will complete informed consent and a questionnaire on a secure website housed at Stanford. They will take a 6-week online self-management program in groups of 20-25, and they fill our additional online questionnaires at 6 month and one year.

The study will determine if the ICDSMP can be effective in the diverse population of South Australia. We hope that this online workshop will provide South Australians easy access to the Chronic Disease Self-Management Workshop. If successful, this program or similar programs could be made broadly available. The workshop being offered on the internet will offer this program as an alternative mode of service delivery to support self-management education for chronic diseases and will become an integral part of high quality primary health care in the state. 1. A potential subject will learn of the project through advertisement done by existing community CDSMP providers or by websites or online newsletter provided by State of South Australia. The announcements will direct them to the study website at Stanford, where they will read a description of the project and leave their names and email addresses if they are interested in participating. 2. When enough people are on the wait list to fill an online workshop, Stanford will send an email with a unique URL for each potential participant to log on, complete the informed consent, and fill out the baseline questionnaire. They will create their own username and password during this process. 3. Once 24 people have enrolled, they will be assigned to a workshop and receive an email detailing when the workshop starts and inviting them to log on to familiarize themselves with the online environment and meet their moderators and other classmates online. 4. They will start the 6-week workshop with each session starting a week apart with new content. They are expected to log on 2-3 times per week, for a total time of about 2 hours. They may log on more often if they wish, and they are not required to log on at any specific time. 5. The workshop consists of didactic/interactive web pages, 4 discussion boards, an internal anonymous message center, a section of personalized tools that are available only to the individual participant and Stanford staff, and a help section. Each workshop is facilitated by 2 trained peer moderators, supervised by Stanford staff. 6. The moderators offer help to those who may be confused by the goal setting exercise, for example, to give feedback to participants' progress, and to remind people to log on if they have not. They monitor for safety. 7. After the end of the 6-week workshop, participants will be able to log into the workshop to review the past 6-weeks' participation and print out any useful workshop materials for future reference 8. 6 months after the end of the 6-week workshop, participants will complete a follow up questionnaire, and again at 1 year.