Self-management Education Programs in Chronic Disease

Self-management programs have been widely reported to help patients manage symptoms and contain utilization of health care resources for several chronic conditions, but to date no systematic review across multiple chronic diseases has been reported. We evaluated the efficacy of patient self-management educational programs for chronic diseases and critically reviewed their methodology.

We searched MEDLINE and HealthSTAR for the period January 1, 1964, through January 31, 1999, then hand searched the reference section of each article for other relevant publications. We included studies if a self-management education intervention for a chronic disease was reported, a concurrent control group was included, and clinical outcomes were evaluated. Two authors reviewed each study and extracted the data on clinical outcomes.