Engaging Parents of Children with Sickle Cell Disease in Shared Decision-Making for 2 Hydroxyurea: The ENGAGE-HU Study

Background: Guidelines recommend that hydroxyurea be offered to children with sickle cell disease (SCD) as early as 9 months of age using shared decision making. To help clinicians implement shared decision-making with parents, we developed the Hydroxyurea Shared Decision-Making (H-SDM) toolkit. We evaluated its effectiveness on parent decisional uncertainty, perceptions of shared decision-making, hydroxyurea knowledge, and likelihood of being offered and prescribed hydroxyurea.

Procedure: Sites began in the usual care condition (clinician pocket guide) before crossing over to the H-SDM toolkit condition between 2018-2022. Caregivers of children with SCD (birth to 5 years) eligible for hydroxyurea completed assessments at baseline, immediately after discussing hydroxyurea with their clinician, and 3-7 months later.

Results: Participants included 176 caregivers (93.2% female, 89% Black); most toolkit participants were enrolled during the pandemic (n=81). There were no statistically significant differences between conditions on parent decisional uncertainty, perceptions of shared decision-making, or hydroxyurea knowledge (p-values>.05). However, there was a clinically important difference in certainty, with higher decisional uncertainty in the usual care group. A greater proportion of participants enrolled during usual care were offered (80.7%) and prescribed hydroxyurea (48.2%), compared to 58.7% offered and 39.7% prescribed during the toolkit condition (p-values<.01).

Conclusions: Findings suggest the toolkit may help parents feel more confident in deciding about hydroxyurea. Given significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on study implementation, the impact on hydroxyurea uptake requires additional exploration. Ultimately, the H-SDM toolkit may be most beneficial for clinics that do not routinely use a shared decision-making process for those considering hydroxyurea.