Self management of health
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Healthwatch in West Yorkshire undertook research on people's opinions and experience of self management. They spoke to 155 people.
People already self-manage their health every day. This will be a bigger part of people’s lives if they have one or more long-term conditions or disabilities. The cost of living was seen as a barrier to self management of conditions,
Successful self-management requires access to quality support on a needs-led and ongoing basis. This means shifting away from seeing self-management as solely led by individuals, towards understanding it as a shared responsibility between them and services.
Supported self-management approaches need to look beyond simply influencing behaviour change and consider wider systemic barriers.
There can be significant risks to people’s health and wellbeing where self-management is promoted but not supported or overseen.
There are lots of things that can be done to increase the chance of supported self-management being successful – these are outlined in the different sections of this report.