Hello,
I have not read this article before and so I cannot comment on whether or not its conclusions are valid and mainstream, or controversial in nature. Even so, from the reporting on their methodology (note that I use the word 'reporting' and not 'conduct' since the latter is impossible to honestly gauge in this situation), the underlying methods used are 'Unclear'. It seems to represent a systematic review of the evidence, but little data is provided on exact search strategies, number of retrieved, excluded and included citations and reasons for exclusion (especially since it may seem that they cherry-picked studies that they felt had higher methodological quality), summary evidence (e.g. OR, RR, etc) from the primary studies since they decided early on that they were not going to meta-analyze data, etc.... In my humble opinion, due to the lack of obvious clear methodology, I would not consider this to be a proper systematic review, but rather a narrative review.
Ahmed
Ahmed M. Abou-Setta, MD, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow/ Project Co-ordinator
University of Alberta Evidence-based Practice Centre (UA-EPC)
Alberta Research Centre for Health Evidence (ARCHE)
University of Alberta
Aberhart Centre One, Room 8412
11402 University Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta
CANADA T6G 2J3
Tel: (780) 492-6248
Fax: (780) 407-6435
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Website: http://www.ualberta.ca/ARCHE/
-----Original Message-----
From: Evidence based health (EBH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ulf Eriksson
Sent: May 12, 2011 9:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Chronic disease self management
Dear friends of the list.
A growing concern in the care of an aging population with increasing freq of chronic conditions, is how to help the patients help themselves. We have been keeping an eye on the development of the evidence-base for (or against) different initiatives for enhancing the patients' self-efficacy in handling their diabetes, COPD, post-treatment malignancies, chronic pain, etc etc
Now recently our eyes fell on this publication:
www.health.org.uk/publications/evidence-helping-people-help-themselves/
Evidence: Helping people help themselves
A review of the evidence considering whether it is worthwhile to support self-management
Has anybody read this? How would you rate it?
The fact that there was no quality weighting and that their method of rating/grading of the different studies is not quite transparent, isnt that a drawback?
Is the 'Health Foundation' actually a stake-holder in this matter? They mention "Co-creating Health" which I know nothing about. Is there a conflict of interest in this review?
Many of the results and considerations in the report are of great relevance and news-worthiness to us.
How do you regard it?
Any comment is helpful,
Cheers
Ulf Eriksson
Karlskrona
Sweden
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