What?
Work package 1 will explore young people and clinician’s views on the key self-management tasks help young people with musculoskeletal chronic pain (MCP) manage their pain on a daily basis. Based on these views, the work package aims to co-create, with young people with MCP and clinicians, a new tool for measuring engagement with these key self-management tasks.
Research questions:
What are the key self-management tasks required to effectively manage MCP in young people?
How can we appropriately, and most effectively, assess young people’s engagement with these self-management tasks?
Why?
Effective self-management can offset lifelong negative impacts from MCP and reduce the impact of pain on a person’s physical and psychological wellbeing and lifestyle (Barlow et al., 2002; Caes et al., 2018). However, most evidence-based self-management interventions for young people with MCP (e.g., prompting behaviour change, social support, acceptance-based approaches, consistent exercise, medication adherence) are only moderately effective (Hechler et al., 2015). This may reflect young people’s suboptimal engagement with self-management interventions (Simons et al., 2010), socio-economic inequalities (Hackmann et al., 2015) and/or challenges young people face with implementing self-management tasks due to cognitive immaturity (Mifflin et al., 2016; Weiss et al., 2018).
However, there is a lack of consensus regarding the essential self-management tasks young people need to engage with to effectively manage MCP and a limited understanding of the challenges faced by young people when engaging with these tasks. Identifying key self-management tasks for young people with MCP and co-developing a tool to accurately measure engagement with these tasks is crucial to assess progress, improve therapeutic gains, and offset lifelong disability.
How?
Phase 1:
We will interview 15-30 young people with MCP, and 15 clinicians to identify key self management tasks and understand challenges with engagement.
Phase 2:
We will use workshops with key stakeholders to facilitate co-design of a new tool for measuring engagement with these key tasks.
When?
Work package 1 will get underway from mid-2025 and will continue until the end of 2026.