217996 College freshmen with chronic illness: A comparison with healthy first-year students

Monday, November 8, 2010

Kate Herts, MSEd , School of Public Health, Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Gary Maslow, MD , School of Public Health, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
  
Background: College students with chronic illness are at risk of physical, psychological, and educational distress.

Purpose: This study tested the hypothesis that college freshmen with chronic illness have lower health-related quality of life (HRQoL), are lonelier, and miss more days of class than their healthy peers.

Significance: Childhood chronic illness is relatively common, yet few studies examine the prevalence or effects of chronic illness among young adults with chronic illness as they transition to college.

Methodology: Freshmen students at a private university were given an online survey. The survey included: questions about the students' specific chronic conditions; the UCLA loneliness scale; the CDC 4-item HRQoL scale, and questions about the students' usage of health services and friend support. Groups were compared using t-tests and chi-squared tests where appropriate. The study was IRB approved.

Findings/Results: 163 students responded to the survey, 23 with chronic physical illness (14%), 24 with a chronic mental illness (15%) and 118 without a chronic illness (72%). Students with a chronic illness reported significantly higher levels of loneliness than healthy freshmen, with average scores of 41.4, 47.7, and 53.4, for the non-chronically ill, physically ill, and mentally ill groups respectively. Chronically ill freshmen had lower HRQoL and missed more days of class. Less than 15% of chronically ill freshmen had a local physician.

Conclusion/Recommendations: College freshmen with chronic illness have higher loneliness scores and lower HRQoL then healthy freshmen. Further research is needed to determine how best to support college freshmen as they transition to college.

Learning Areas:
Chronic disease management and prevention

Learning Objectives:
List three challenges that chronically ill students face when transitioning to college. Compare the Health-Related Quality of Life of college freshmen with chronic illness vs. healthy college freshmen. Compare the use of health services of college freshmen with chronic illness vs. healthy college freshmen. Compare the loneliness of college freshmen with chronic illness vs. healthy college freshmen. Discuss possible intervention points to ease the transition to college for students with chronic illness.

Keywords: College Students, Chronic Illness

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am currently a graduate student at Harvard School of Public Health. I hold a Master of Science in Education from the University of Pennsylvania and have worked as a high school teacher for two years. While completing this research project, I was an undergraduate specializing in health policy at Brown University, and was enrolled in the community health senior seminar. I served as a mentor and the student president for a peer-mentoring program for teens with chronic illness for three years, and am currently a board member for that organization, The Adolescent Leadership Council of Hasbro Children's Hospital (TALC). My involvement with TALC inspired the research abstract presented here.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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