About the organization
Our Vision
To ensure that all adolescents or emerging adults with a chronic medical condition/disability and their families from all over the world, receive health care transition and disease self-management preparation by advocating for policy that supports health care systems and providers to implement evidence-based health care transition to adult-focused practices.
Our Mission
To embed well-planned, evidence-based health care transition from pediatric to adult-focused providers as a standard component of health services directed to adolescent/emerging adults with a chronic condition or disability. Through literacy and culturally appropriate interventions, our international research collaboration will optimize disease self-management skills and patient outcomes.
Our members and purpose
We are an organization of volunteer adolescent/emerging adult patients with chronic conditions, parents and health providers/researchers with the purpose to advance an evidence-based research agenda on health care transition and self-management.
Our Goals
1) Produce or validate assessment tools that will allow health care transition readiness to be effectively monitored by health providers, while at the same time helping to guide policy.
2) Develop and evaluate interventions designed to improve the process of health care transition and disease self-management; ranging from those that target provider education to those that directly involve the patients and their families.
3) Develop practice-based health care transition research networks, optimizing longitudinal outcomes in electronic health records.
Our Support
North Carolina Team: Maria Ferris (lead). The UNC TRxANSITION Program maintains our website, list serve with in-kind support from The UNC General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine Division
California Team: The University of Southern California (Cecily Betz, lead) University of California San Francisco (Meggie Okumura, lead). This team maintains and organizes the monthly webinars and abstract processing systems.
New York (Lynn Davidson, lead) and Illinois teams (Parag Shah lead). This team coordinates the activities of our annual spring meeting at the Special Interest Group on Healthcare Transition and Self-management. This meeting takes place in partnership with the Pediatric Academic Societies/Society of Pediatric Research Meeting
Texas team (Al Hergenroeder, lead). This team co-hosts our annual fall conference in partnership with the Chronic Illness & Disease Conference, Transition from Pediatric to Adult Care, in Houston, Texas.
Other institutions from across the world. All consortium members volunteer their time.
Our history
• It all started in 1981: Michael Ted Ferris, an extraordinary young man and the source of inspiration
* In 2006 Maria E. Diaz-Gonzalez de Ferris, MD, MPH, PhD maria_ferris@med.unc.edu founded the UNC TRxANSITION Program with seed funding from the UNC Pediatric Center for Education Research and Therapeutics (Drs. Harry Guess and Sue Tolleson-Reinhart) and K.B. Reynolds Foundation
* In 2008 partnerships where formed with North Carolina providers (Peter Sim at Victory Junction Camp, Paul Sagerman at Wake Forrest University, Geri Matsoo/Monique Bethel at the North Carolina Department of Health and Irene)
• 2009: Partnership with researchers from Florida (John Reiss, David Wood, Janet Hess and Arwa Saidi), Boston (Greg Sawicki) and other organizations from around the world.
* in 2015, the Executive committee was formed, led by Cecil Betz with the following members (in alphabetical order) Nancy Cheak-Zamora, Lynn Davidson, Maria Diaz-Gonzalez de Ferris, Rita Nathawad, Megie Okumura, Paragh Shah, David Thomas and Jason Woodward
Our activities
1. Monthly webinars
2. Semi-annual conferences
3. Collaboration to advance the evidence in the field of healthcare transition and self-management
4. Peer-reviewed special issues on health care transition