Transitioning Together: Collaborative Work in Adolescent Chronic Illness Management

TL;DR

This study explores how adolescents with chronic illnesses and their parents collaborate on self-management tasks during the transition to adult healthcare, highlighting tensions and opportunities for supportive technology.

Contribution

It provides new insights into adolescent-parent collaboration in self-management and discusses design considerations for technology to support this transition.

Findings

Adolescents manage routine care and experiment with independence.

Conflicts arise between adolescents' independence and parents' safety concerns.

Shared activities facilitate learning and practicing self-management skills.

Abstract

Adolescents with chronic illnesses need to learn self-management skills in preparation for the transition from pediatric to adult healthcare, which is associated with negative health outcomes for youth. However, few studies have explored how adolescents in a pre-transition stage practice self-management and collaborative management with their parents. Through interviews with 15 adolescents (aged 15-17), we found that adolescents managed mundane self-care tasks and experimented with lifestyle changes to be more independent, which sometimes conflicted with their parents' efforts to ensure their safety. Adolescents and their parents also performed shared activities that provided adolescents with the opportunity to learn and practice self-management skills. Based on our findings, we discuss considerations for technology design to facilitate transition and promote parent-adolescent collaboration in light of these tensions.