King's College London

In this study, we will test and improve a programme of education for young people (aged 14 to 19 years) with Type 1 diabetes to help them adjust to living with diabetes during a time in their lives when their bodies, emotions and social worlds are changing. The programme was designed with young people to address their needs during adolescence. The young people named the programme Youth-Empowerment-Skills (YES). The aim of this study is to see if participating in the programme can improve the physical, psychological and social wellbeing of young people. We also aim to assess young people’s experiences within the programme and the way it impacts on how they look after their diabetes. In-so-doing we will identify young people’s views on the different elements of the programme. This understanding together with the assessment of the programme’s impact will enable us to improve the programme before we test it in a larger study. In addition, we aim to collect information which will help us design a future study by considering issues in relation to: the recruitment of the participants; how many young people complete the programme; and the measures we use to assess the impact of programme.

In this project, we will compare YES with usual care to estimate how well the programme works in respect of blood sugar levels, psychological well-being, and social adjustment. We will recruit 60 young people from diabetes centres across London. If acceptable, we will allocate participants by chance into two groups, half will be offered the YES programme immediately, the other half will be placed on a waiting-list (control group). The waiting-list group will receive the YES programme at 6 months when we have compared their outcomes to the initial YES group. We will then assess both groups again at 12 months, to ascertain whether the benefits seen in the initial YES group are maintained and if a similar effect occurs in the waiting list group at 6 months. Further, we want to improve the programme following this study and inform the design of a larger follow-up study. We will therefore, collect information on the participants’ experiences of the study as well as information on how well the study worked in recruiting and following-up participants. This will involve a mixture of interviews and surveys with young people, their relatives and healthcare professionals, plus an audit of recruitment and programme delivery.