Self-management needs, strategies and support for sickle cell disease in developing countries: a scoping review...

Sickle cell disease (SCD) poses a significant global health burden, particularly affecting individuals in developing countries with constrained healthcare resources. While research on self-management in the context of SCD is emerging, it has predominantly focused on primary studies, and there is a notable dearth of evidence synthesis on SCD self-management in developing countries. This scoping review aims to identify and map self-management needs of individuals living with SCD, the strategies they employed to meet those needs, and the support systems available to them.

The review will be conducted following the Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) 29 framework to comprehensively examine the landscape of SCD self-management research. Searches will be performed in PubMed, Scopus, Embase and Dimensions AI, with additional searches in other databases and grey literature. Indexed literature published in English from inception to January 2024 will be included. Reference list from included studies will also be searched manually. Two teams will be constituted to independently screen titles, abstracts and full text against the eligible criteria. Data will be extracted from included studies onto a customised data extraction form.

Ethical approval is not required for this review due to the fact that it synthesises information from available publications. The findings will be disseminated through publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Also, the findings will possibly be presented at relevant international and national conferences. This protocol has already been registered with the Open Science Framework. The study characteristics such as design and setting will be descriptively analysed and presented as graphs, tables and figures. Thematic analysis will also be conducted based on the study objectives and presented as a narrative summary.