Bree Holtz, PhD
Published: Oct. 15, 2014
Sparrow and MSU’s Center for Innovation and Research has awarded nearly $9,000 in project funds to support focus groups in gathering baseline data on adolescents with Type-1 diabetes. The data will be used to prepare a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant Proposal titled: Using an mHealth app to transition care of Type-1 diabetes from parents to teens.
Focus groups and interviews will include adolescents with T1D, parents of children with T1D diabetes, and pediatric diabetes nurses who care for T1D children and adolescents. The goal is to better identify what characterizes the transition period between parent management and self-management; what the biggest challenges are, what the communication is like between parents and children, and what a proposed mobile phone app could do to aid in that transition.
“Being able to gather this pilot data will provide us a better perspective on what it is like for both the parents and the adolescents during this time and where an app will be able to help,” said awardee Bree Holtz, PhD, Michigan State University College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Department of Media and Information. “The ability to have this preliminary data and additional resources during the grant preparation will significantly improve the quality of our grant proposal.”
Type-1 diabetes (T1D) affects approximately three million people in the United States. Each year more than 15,500 children aged 0-19 are diagnosed with the disease. T1D typically presents when the Patient is a child and the parents play an active role in the management of the disease. As the child matures, however, he or she must learn how to care for and manage their disease on their own.
Holtz’s team includes Michael Wood, M.D., and Julie Dunneback, BSN, MSN from Sparrow. Shelia Cotten, PhD, Denise Soltow Hershey, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, and Amanda Holmstrom, PhD, from MSU round out the team.
The Center for Innovation and Research, created as a major joint initiative between Sparrow and MSU, aims to seek new projects to continuously improve care and deliver Patient-centered, evidence-based best practice care to individuals who receive care at Sparrow.