Health Care Transformation: Caregiver Support Project

Healthcare systems are increasingly recognizing and supporting the role of dementia caregivers as vital members of the health care team who also need support. With the expanding responsibilities of family caregivers, there remains a significant lack of measurement tools for clinicians to evaluate caregiver well-being, a lack of identification of caregivers in the medical record, and limited models to provide clinical services to dementia caregivers. Systems transformation work is needed in this area to bring person-centered, palliative care principles to support caregivers and older adults with life limiting conditions. I aspire to be a social work leader in palliative care by expanding palliative care initiatives and integrating dementia caregiver services into health care systems at the national level. The goals of my project are to 1) Create a Dementia Caregiver Roadmap for healthcare leaders to implement palliative care programs for caregivers in their own memory clinics; 2) Build on my previous work to validate the Caregiver Outcomes Psychotherapy Evaluation (COPE) measure and 3) Launch a Caregiver Campaign to promote palliative care across the UT Health Austin system.