Do Family Interventions Improve Health?

The central aim of this article is to examine the evidence that family interventions improve health in persons with chronic illness and their family members, across the life span. The review focuses on recent meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of family intervention research. In adults, evidence supports the salutary effects of family interventions versus usual medical care for patient health and mental health, and for family member health. In children, robust evidence supports family-based multimodal interventions for obesity treatment. Reasonable evidence supports family approaches to type 1 diabetes treatment in children. Nurses led the research or were members of interdisciplinary research teams in several of these literatures, representing one quarter to one third of the research cited, but were absent in other literatures, such as family treatment of childhood obesity.