Welcome to the website for the Family Synthesis Project (FaSP). The overall objective of the project is to complete syntheses of findings from over 1000 research reports on the intersection of family life and childhood chronic physical conditions.

We developed the website keeping in mind the needs and interests of both practitioners who care for children with chronic conditions and family researchers. In addition to providing a description of our study and research team, the site includes citations to all reports included in our sample organized by condition and research design, the templates we used to extract information from research reports, the coding categories used in our analyses, and a listing of publications and presentations. For those interested in synthesis research, we have a section on resources for undertaking your own synthesis study

Ours is a large scale study, but we believe the research strategies we used are applicable to studies of a lesser scope. Please visit our website often as we will continue to update and report results from our ongoing analyses. Please contact us if you have any questions or want further information about the study.

NEWS

Strong FaSP presence at the 13th Annual IFNA Conference

Six FaSP team members (Drs. Kathy Knafl, Nancy Havill, Louise Fleming & Hayley Estrem as well as PhD students Ashley Vaughan and Anna Lee) were all presenters at the 13th annual International Family Nursing Association Conference in Pamplona, Spain in June of 2017. Drs. Knafl and Havill were gave expert lectures and led pre-conference workshops.

FaSP article wins "2016 Best Research Article!"

FaSP article entitled Family Functioning and the Well-Being of Children with Chronic Conditions wins the "2016 Best Research Article" in Research in Nursing and Health. Please look under the Dissemination for the full citation. Congrats to Drs Leeman, Crandall, Bai, Sandelowski, and Knafl as well as research assistant and PhD student Anna Lee!

Dr. Kathleen Knafl Travels To The UK

In late November, Dr. Kathleen Knafl and her colleague from UNC's School of Nursing, Dr. Marcia Van Riper, traveled to Leeds, UK to participate in a White Rose collaboration project that focused on the challenges of promoting family-focused care in the UK's National Health Service. Drs. Knafl and Van Riper met with other international leaders in family health care to discuss goals and research design for a future grant application that would provide tools to foster family-focused care across the lifespan. They surely had a smashing good time!

Dr. Jennifer Leeman's Recent Article Receives Best Paper of 2016!

Dr. Jennifer Leeman, who is a member of the FaSP team, had her recent article entitled "Family Functioning and the Well-Being of Children with Chronic Conditions: A Meta-Analysis" selected as the Research in Nursing and Health (RINAH) Best Paper of 2016! Her co-authors were Jamie Crandell, Anna Lee, Jinbing Bai, Margarete Sandelowski, and Kathleen Knafl, who are all also members of the FaSP team. The winner of the Best Paper is identified in a rigorous rating process by members of the RINAH Editorial Board with no conflicts of interest. Most years there are two winners, but this paper stands alone as winner for this year. In recognition of this achievement, a full-page announcement will appear on the back cover of the February 2017 issue of RINAH, and the co-authors will receive a hard copy subscription to the journal for 2017. Congratulations Dr. Leeman!

New Article From FaSP Now in Print

There is a new FaSP team article in print which consists of a mixed-methods synthesis of 29 research reports addressing the intersection of family life and juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The citation can be found under the Dissemination-->Publications tab.