The University of Pittsburgh Center for Caregiving Research, Education, and Policy is submitting this proposal for a Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Family Support. The proposed Center for Research, Training, and Dissemination of Family Support for People with Disabilities Across the Life Course will focus research, training, technical assistance and dissemination efforts under the theme of “Caregiver Support Empowers the Whole Family”. The mission of our proposed Center is to facilitate the rapid translation and dissemination of state-of-the-art research and training into direct services and support programs designed to improve care, health and quality of life of people with disabilities (PwD) and their families. To achieve our mission of increasing access to family support, the center will have 4 aims: 1) Advance state-of-the-science research in caregiving, rehabilitation; and ehealth self-management support in PwD and their family caregivers with the goal of maintaining independent living in the community; 2) Train health and rehabilitation providers and researchers to support families caring for PwD; 3) Leverage findings from center research projects to advance the capacity of healthcare and public health systems to deliver high-quality, tailored support to family caregivers of PwD, and; 4) Utilize dynamic mechanisms to translate and disseminate knowledge to PwD, family caregivers, policymakers, service providers, researchers, employers, and other key stakeholders. Our four research projects have been designed at the intersection of three domains of science: caregiving, disability/rehabilitation, and ehealth self-management support with the goal of supporting family caregivers of PwD to maintain independent living in the community. Our projects will: (R1) Characterize family support and its impact on health and quality of life outcomes among PwD across the lifespan and their family caregivers living in the community, (R2) Deve
lop and evaluate an ImHere mobile health self-management intervention for family caregivers to be delivered in conjunction with an existing intervention for patients with brain and spinal anomalies, (R3) Scale-up and disseminate CAPABLE (an established intervention to support older adults with activity limitations and their family caregivers with aging in place) into Area Agencies on Aging with the goal of increasing access to families who do not qualify for Medicaid and cannot afford services; (R4) Implement and evaluate an mHealth SmartRehab program (a caregiver self-management intervention with demonstrated efficacy) across a large healthcare system to optimize return to social participation for survivors of gynecologic cancer with participation restrictions and their family caregivers. Our interdisciplinary team brings over 30 years of family caregiving research to this proposal. The co-Directors come from the School of Nursing; School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the University Center for Social and Urban Research. Additional collaborators bring expertise in rehabilitation, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, health policy, medicine, psychology, health information technology, and statistics. We have and will continue to work with diverse stakeholders representing PwD, caregivers, clinicians, technical assistance providers and national advocacy groups. Our training and dissemination plans are equally broad-based targeting graduate and undergraduate students, practicing clinicians, and researchers and each of the key stakeholder groups aforementioned.
