Young South Australians with complex chronic health problems share their experiences of transitioning care through the Health Journey Mapping Project

Young peo­ple with chron­ic ill­ness­es often face unique chal­lenges, includ­ing nav­i­gat­ing the tran­si­tion from pae­di­atric to adult healthcare. 

The Health Jour­ney Map­ping Project is a qual­i­ta­tive study, led by A/​Professor Josephine Thomas, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ado­les­cent Tran­si­tion Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work (SCN), the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide and Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty, to improve the tran­si­tion of care for young peo­ple with com­plex chron­ic health con­di­tions. As part of the study, young South Aus­tralian adults, and their fam­i­lies are inter­viewed about their expe­ri­ences nav­i­gat­ing care between both pae­di­atric and adult settings. 

Some of the par­tic­i­pants in the study also have com­mu­ni­ca­tion dis­abil­i­ties, such as dif­fi­cul­ty speak­ing or hear­ing, with spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion access needs. To enable equi­table par­tic­i­pa­tion in the study, the inter­view­ers from the CEIH team under­went train­ing around com­mu­ni­ca­tion access needs and iden­ti­fied the need for par­tic­i­pant infor­ma­tion and con­sent forms to be pro­vid­ed in an easy-read for­mat. Easy read is a way to present infor­ma­tion in a unique way or style so that the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed is easy to understand. 

The project is fund­ed by Cen­tral Ade­laide Local Health Net­work (CAL­HN) and learn­ings from the Health Jour­ney Map­ping Project will sup­port and inform oth­er projects being led by the Ado­les­cent Tran­si­tion Care SCN to improve the access, qual­i­ty and expe­ri­ence of tran­si­tion­ing care for young people. 

The inter­views for the project com­menced in June 2023 with the remain­ing inter­views due to be com­plet­ed by the end of the year. The inter­view and research team have been meet­ing week­ly to reflect and dis­cuss the top­ics and themes pre­sent­ed across the interviews. 

The research team has already iden­ti­fied some promis­ing insights from the study and these find­ings will be pre­sent­ed at the Aus­tralian Asso­ci­a­tion for Ado­les­cent Health Con­fer­ence in Ade­laide in Novem­ber 2023. 

The research team would like to acknowl­edge and thank the par­tic­i­pants for their open­ness and will­ing­ness to be a part of the study. 

For more infor­ma­tion about the Health Jour­ney Map­ping Project, please con­tact us at CEIH.​AdolescentTransition@​sa.​gov.​au.