Patient activation among people living with HIV: a cross-sectional comparative analysis with people living with diabetes mellitus

ABSTRACT

Standardized self-management supports are an integral part of care delivery for many chronic conditions. We used the validated Patient Activation Measure (PAM®) to assess level of engagement for self-management from a sample of 165 people living with HIV (PLWH) and 163 people with diabetes. We conducted multivariable logistic regression to assess associations between demographics and PAM® scores. PLWH had high levels of activation that were no different from those of people with diabetes (mean score = 67.2, SD = 14.2 versus 65.0, SD = 14.9, p = 0.183). After adjusting for patient characteristics, only being on disability compared to being employed or a student was associated with being less activated (AOR = 0.276, 95%CI = 0.103–0.742). Our findings highlight the potential for the implementation of existing standardized chronic disease self-management programs to enhance the care delivery for PLWH, with people on disability as potential target populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Patient activation
• self-management
• chronic disease
• HIV/AIDS
• diabetes

Acknowledgements

We thank the people who generously donated their time and filled out the surveys, and we thank the staff of the Foustanellas Endocrine and Diabetes Centre and the Immunodeficiency Clinic (HIV/AIDS) at The Ottawa Hospital for supporting our study. We confirm that all patient identifiers have been removed such that patients described are not identifiable and cannot be identified through the details of the story. We are also grateful to Piragas Puveendran and John Flynn who administered the surveys to participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) under the [grant number FRN TT5–128270].