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New Health Partnerships - Open Book

If you have a chronic or long-term condition, you and your family have to manage it all day, every day. If you do, you can maintain a healthy, positive, productive life. If you don’t, you and your family may suffer unnecessarily. Self-management involves three different kinds of tasks - caring for your body, adapting your activities to your condition, and dealing with the emotions that illness brings. 

 

Self-management often involves medical treatments and therapies. It can also mean making lifestyle changes, such as eating better, reducing stress, or increasing exercise. You might also need to make changes in your life, like improving work or family relationships or changing how you interact with health care providers.

 

Whether you are a person with a chronic or long-term condition, or a family member, this section of New Health Partnerships will provide information, resources, and support you need.

 

Being Active in Health Care

Live well, take charge,
inform yourself,
and manage symptoms.

Read More 

You're Not In This Alone

Family members,
health care providers,
and communities can help.

Read More 

Getting Started With Self Management

Basic skills – goal setting,
action planning, and problem-solving.

Read More 

Staying on Track

Dealing with hard emotions,
negative thoughts,
and life changes
.
 

Read More 

Helping Others Self Manage

Help family and peers,
and yourself at the same time.

Read More 

Improving Health Care for Others

Your experience can help improve
health care for all.

Read More 

 



A Patient Voice Helps Improve Care for Others

ruthjean2

Ruth-Jean Francois

Patient Advisor

 

Cambridge Health Alliance Adult Medicine Clinic

Somerville, Massachusetts

 

Meet Ruth-Jean, a patient advisor, who is helping her clinic change how they work with individuals with long-term conditions. Read More. 



Excellent Self-Managment Guides

 

Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions by Kate Lorig, Halsted Holman, David Sobel, and Diana Laurent Bull Publishing 2006. The original book on self-management, with specific information on heart disease, lung disease, arthritis, diabetes, chronic pain, and more.  See more at Amazon.

 

Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health when you have a Chronic Illness by David Spero RN, Hunter House 2002.  A holistic view of self-management, considering your whole life, not just diet and exercise. See more at Amazon.

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