Eczema Care Online – Development and Testing of Online Interventions to Support Self-Care for People with Eczema

Problem

People with eczema often have difficulty using their prescribed treatments sufficiently to keep their eczema under control. There are many reasons why people face challenges managing their eczema, including time-consuming treatment applications, initial stinging when applied to inflamed skin, concerns about treatment safety, and receiving insufficient or conflicting advice about how and when to use treatments.We will explore and seek to address barriers to effective treatment within a newly-funded programme of research, leading to the development and evaluation of digital interventions (websites/apps) that use behaviour change techniques to support eczema self-care.

Approach

To improve the lives of people with eczema by developing and testing digital interventions that will support self-care and address common barriers to eczema self-care, including concerns around topical corticosteroid safety.

Findings

This work will take place over the next five years in an inter-linked research programme . Our five workstreams will: i) understand facilitators and barriers to effective self-care amongst people with eczema (children with eczema and their families, teenagers and young adults managing their own eczema); ii) review the evidence base regarding safety of topical corticosteroids and develop knowledge tools to support shared understanding between patients, parents/carers and clinicians; iii) develop two digital interventions to support eczema self-care: one for parents/carers of children with eczema and one for teenagers and young adults managing their own eczema; iv) determine the clinical and cost-effectiveness of digital self-care interventions compared to standard clinical care in a randomised controlled trial; and v) a process evaluation to explore how to integrate interventions into clinical practice and to facilitate their uptake should they prove clinically and cost-effective.This programme of work will produce a clear summary of current best evidence on the safety of topical corticosteroids; develop knowledge tools to facilitate shared understanding between clinicians and patients; develop two new fully evaluated self-care support interventions for the groups described above; and develop plans for how to rapidly integrate these interventions into clinical practice (if effective).

Consequences

Improved self-care has the potential to benefit people with eczema through better use of treatments and improved quality of life. It also has potential benefits for the healthcare system through reducing primary care consultation rates for eczema, more appropriate prescribing, and reduced referrals to secondary care.