Living with Long-term Conditions
Over 15 million people in England live with at least one long-term condition (Department of Health, 2005). This number is expected to rise, as is the number of people with multiple conditions. Long-term conditions typically cannot be cured but need to be managed over long periods of time, and may involve care from both health and social services.
It is a key government priority to assess and improve outcomes in long-term conditions (Department of Health, 2013a,b). Traditional clinical outcomes indicators such as mortality or improvements in physical health may not be informative enough to monitor outcomes in long-term conditions. With long-term conditions, where care is likely to be more complex, there is a need to move beyond more traditional domains of health outcomes to capture a broader sense of what people living with long-term conditions value and aspire to in terms of their quality of life.
With the movement in health and social care services towards integrated care, a new questionnaire applicable across long-term conditions (physical and mental health) is needed.
Aims of the “Living with Long-term Conditions” Project
The aim of the research programme is to develop a self-report questionnaire for long-term conditions, that is valid and acceptable for people with single or multiple long-term conditions. It is envisaged that the questionnaire will capture both traditional and non-traditional outcomes and be relevant and meaningful for health and social care providers in terms of monitoring and improving management and outcomes of long-term conditions.
Acknowledgement of funding & Disclaimer
This study is funded partly by the Department of Health (DH) in England and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
The DH funds this programme of research as part of the Quality and Outcomes of Person-centred Care Policy Research Unit (QORU) which is a collaboration of the Universities of Kent, Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). For more information on QORU, please visit: http://www.qoru.ac.uk/.
The research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care Oxford at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. The CLAHRC involves researchers from the University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division, including the Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, the Nuffield Department of Population Health and the Department of Psychiatry.
Disclaimer: The views expressed on this website are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health.