Grant: Project Grant

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus is a disease in which the body's immune system makes a mistake and attacks healthy tissue in many parts of the body. It is also called lupus or SLE. People with lupus are often very tired, feel pain all over their body and have mental health problems so it can be hard for them to find or keep a job. If young adults (18-30 years of age) cannot start work, they can run into problems later in life. That is why it is important for us to understand the details of how young Canadians with lupus work. We do know a bit about this, but we need more information so that we can help them in the future. Our research study has 3 parts. The first part of our research study will look at how young adults with lupus change in their work. For example, we will look at how they change from being a student to becoming employed or unemployed. We will compare this to how other people of same age and sex change in their work. Young adults can be hard to study. They move around a lot and they go through many changes in their lives. To deal with this problem, we want to collect this information in a new, quicker and better way (second part). We will use what we learn in the first part to test if we can use the new way to collect information so that we can design better research studies in the future. Finally, we will interview young adults with lupus to learn about their work and any problems they had in the past (third part). Our findings will be shared with young people living with lupus, their families, doctors and employers to raise awareness about how hard it can be to work when a person has lupus. All the information we learn from our research study will be used to design a strong and better future study to find out what might be associated with employment changes in young people with lupus. The information we will learn from the future study will let us design a program to help young people with lupus get new jobs, keep old ones and live better lives.