Sense of mastery and attitude towards illness: Examining longitudinal benefits of a medical specialty camp for youth with sickle cell disease

Abstract

Medical specialty camps can play an important role in the positive development of psychosocial outcomes for children and youth with sickle cell disease (SCD). This study examined how sense of mastery and attitude towards illness outcomes changed over 6 months for 100 campers aged 8–16 years with SCD. The outcomes were measured twice before and twice after camp. Latent growth curve modeling was used to analyze data. Results showed no changes in the outcomes for this study population. Implications for future research designs, populations, and outcomes are discussed, as are implications for communications about camp, and policy and practice.

Developmental differences in reported overparenting, autonomy, and glucose monitoring within a medical specialty camp context

“…A child’s use of a CGM presents an avenue for overparenting behaviors to emerge in a digitally centered context in which youth can become over-monitored and correspondingly fail to develop necessary diabetes management independence (Viklund & Wikblad, 2009). Medical specialty camps (MSC) enable youth to build knowledge and skills to autonomously manage their illness in a supportive, community-based setting (Gillard et al, 2022; Wang et al, 2008). While MSC program-level factors influencing youth outcomes have received research attention (Barone et al, 2016; Gagnon et al, 2019), the individual, family, and context-level characteristics that may influence parental behaviors and youth TID management are less clear.…”