Project overview

We will develop and test online resources that address the needs of people with eczema in supporting their use of eczema treatments. The research will focus on meeting the needs of carers of children with eczema, and teenagers and young adults who manage their own eczema. We will also address the concerns of patients and healthcare professionals around the safety of topical corticosteroids.

This project will be carried out through the following five inter-connected work packages (WPs):

WP 1: Explore the support needs and barriers to self-care through reviewing the existing evidence and conducting interviews with people with eczema and people who care for someone with eczema.
Objectives: Gain an understanding of experiences of eczema, including self-care support needs and patient/carer views on, and experience of, using eczema treatments.

WP 2: Systematically review existing evidence on topical corticosteroid safety.
Objectives: Establish current best evidence on the safety of topical corticosteroids and use this to create tools to support shared decision making and shared understanding between health professionals and people with eczema.

WP 3: Develop two online interventions to help support self-care: one for parents/carers of children with eczema and one for teenagers and young adults with eczema.
Objectives: Create two tailored interventions designed to target and influence behaviour.

WP 4: Determine clinical and cost-effectiveness of the online interventions compared to standard care by performing two randomised controlled trials with health economic analyses.
Objectives: Feasibility randomised controlled trials will establish the trial recruitment and viability, and the full-scale trials will determine clinical and cost effectiveness.

WP 5: Investigate how the interventions can be integrated into clinical practice and facilitate their uptake if effective.
Objectives: Support the interpretation of the findings and facilitate uptake of the interventions and engage with clinical communities to promote sign-posting towards interventions.

Contact: [email protected]
This research is being conducted by the Primary Care Research Centre

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Miriam Santer

Professor of Primary Care Research

Research interests

  • Self-management of long-term conditions
  • Primary Care Dermatology - particularly eczema, acne and cellulitis
  • Mixed methods research including development and evaluation of complex interventions
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Other researchers

Professor Paul Little

Professor in Primary Care Research
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Professor Lucy Yardley OBE

Professorial Fellow-Research
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Professor Ingrid Muller BSc, MSc, PhD, CPsychol, FHEA

Professor

Research interests

  • Self-management of long-term conditions
  • Behavioural health interventions
  • Digital health
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Professor Gareth Griffiths

Director SCTU & Prof of Clinical Trials

Research interests

  • Gareth Griffiths is Professor of Clinical Trials and directs our Southampton Clinical Trials Unit.  He works with clinicians, research groups and other scientists in the development of important clinical trials and other well-designed studies that aim to improve the treatment of a range of cancers and other diseases, and early diagnosis of cancer.
  • His works spans the different phases of clinical trials, from small dose finding and safety studies involving a handful of patients to larger trials of hundreds of patients looking at whether the treatments are better than the current standard treatments.  His early diagnosis studies include thousands of patients looking at new ways to detect cancer early.  Ultimately, these studies could help change the way that patients are treated for the better, by creating the evidence so as the new treatments becomes the standard of care for future patients treated in the NHS.
  • Phase I-III clinical trials
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Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs