This page is optimized for a taller screen. Please rotate your device or increase the size of your browser window.

Self-Management Support Guidance for Primary Care Clinicians and Patients


Successful self-management support (SMS) has the potential to change individuals’ behavior, improve health outcomes, and decrease the burden of chronic illness and chronic illness care on patients, caregivers, clinicians, and the health care system. Self-management interventions, however, remain underutilized in primary care settings. Many practicing primary care clinicians haven’t had the opportunity to develop the skills to educate their patients on self-management support or to implement them effectively in their work.

As a next step in supporting activities to improve primary care and patients’ health outcomes, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) contracted with Abt Global and Expert Consultant Judith Schaefer of the MacColl Institute to develop a searchable multi-media library of action-oriented SMS resources for primary care clinicians and clinical teams. AHRQ’s resource library is aimed at providing materials for primary care clinicians and clinical teams who may be at various stages of SMS experience in order to support their behavior change activities with patients and implementation of activities at the practice level. In addition to the resource library, Abt collaborated with Advise and Consent, Inc. to develop brief videos to illuminate SMS concepts, engage viewers in understanding why SMS is important or why a clinical team would want to use it with their patients, and provide examples of how SMS can be implemented into practice.
Regions
North America