LIving BEtteR With asThma - Intervention Development Study

Approximately 330 million people in the world are living with asthma and 3-10% of them has difficult asthma that is challenging to control even with maximum doses of pharmacological treatment. In the last five years our multidisciplinary team has shown the clinical benefits of a short-term structured exercise programme for people living with difficult asthma (PDA) (1). However, engaging PDA in self-maintained exercise long-term and outside of the hospital environment remains a challenge. Changing and maintaining behaviours requires complex psychological and cognitive processes and appropriate modes of support by skilled practitioners. Underpinned by behavioural science and health psychology principles, our team has developed a world renown multimodal self-management support intervention for people living with cancer (2). The intervention focuses on initiating and maintaining exercise, optimising diet and includes supporting people through the cognitive and psychological processes to change their behaviour. We aim to adapt this intervention for PDA to optimise their self-management via the LIBERTY study. To achieve the best outcomes, prior to commencing the LIBERTY study, we aim to develop the intervention using the acclaimed Person-Based Approach (PBA) (3). This methodology is considered gold standard in behaviour change intervention development, implementation and evaluation and maximise the probability of the uptake and maintenance of the desired behaviour.