mHealth Family Self-Management

mHealth Family Self-Management Intervention for Parents of Transplanted Children

This innovative research will address a gap in the literature involving the evaluation of the impact of an individualized family-centered mHealth application to enhance daily post-discharge communication following pediatric transplant. This proposal lays the foundation for future research with myFAMI (self-management intervention) at multiple pediatric transplant centers and builds the science from which to consider post discharge monitoring and decrease cost of care in other pediatric chronic illness populations.

Inclusion Criteria:

Pediatric patients:

1. Has undergone a heart, kidney, or liver transplant being discharged home from the hospital
2. Has two eligible family members available to answer questions about the patient

Family members will be eligible for participation upon meeting the following inclusion criteria:

1. is English speaking (to date the instruments being used have been validated for English speaking participants only)
2. is 18 years of age or older
3. has a pediatric family member (< 18 years old) who has undergone a heart, kidney, or liver transplant being discharged home from the hospital.

Exclusion Criteria for the family members are:

1. presence of significant communication or cognitive impairment that would preclude completion of questionnaires based on self-report; or
2. the pediatric family member has experienced a previous transplant based on self report.

Participants unable to speak and read English will be excluded due to the lack of resources to develop the app and communicate via FaceTime in different languages. We will recruit family members from three types of transplant populations to allow for sufficient sample in a limited time frame for this complex pediatric surgery and high-risk population.

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