Co-design and development of a Personalised Exercise-based Rehabilitation and self-management programme FOR people with Multiple long-term conditions: The PERFORM intervention

BACKGROUND: Exercise and self-management support may be clinically effective and cost-effective treatments for a range of individual long-term conditions (LTCs), as they activate multiple beneficial physiological and psychological mechanisms. We aimed to develop a complex intervention to deliver exercise and self-management support for people with multiple LTCs (MLTCs). METHODS: Following the Person Based Approach to intervention development, we conducted ten co-development workshops with people with MLTCs, family and friends; healthcare providers; service commissioners and policymakers. The workshops iteratively identified the unmet needs of people with MLTCs and informed a programme theory outlining theoretical mechanisms of change and intervention strategies to change the targeted behaviours. They also identified ideas for efficient delivery and service providers' training needs. Mixed methods feedback from the Personalised Exercise-Rehabilitation FOR people with Multiple long-term conditions (PERFORM) feasibility study (reported elsewhere) informed intervention refinement. RESULTS: A diverse group of stakeholders (26 people with MLTCs/supporters, 13 service providers, 16 experts in chronic illness and 14 service commissioners) helped to develop the PERFORM intervention. This included 16 supervised exercise sessions and 16 'Health and Wellbeing' self-management support sessions, delivered in hospital or community settings over eight weeks, plus check-in sessions at four and six months. The self-management sessions covered maintenance of exercise/physical activity, healthy eating and managing common symptoms (pain, fatigue, breathlessness, stress). CONCLUSION: The PERFORM intervention is a comprehensive, evidence-informed, theoretically driven self-management and exercise-based rehabilitation intervention, co-developed with people with MLTCs, service providers and service commissioners. PERFORM is now ready for evaluation regarding clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.