Application of Machine Learning Techniques to Examine Social Service Needs Among Hispanic Family Caregivers of Persons with Dementia.

We applied machine learning algorithms to examine the relationship between demographics and outcomes of the social work services used by Hispanic family caregivers of persons with dementia recruited for a clinical trial in New York City. The social work service needs were largely concentrated on instrumental support to gain access to the healthcare system rather than other concrete services (e.g.

Translating the REACH OUT dementia caregiver intervention into a primary care setting: a pilot study.

Objective: The current study translated the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health: Offering Useful Treatments (REACH OUT), a skills-building stress and burden intervention, for the primary care setting and pilot the resulting intervention.

Methods: The 16-week intervention consisted of a combination of clinic-based group and one-on-one sessions offered within a medical home, geriatrics clinic. A quasi-experimental pre- and post-test study design without a control group tested the resulting intervention.

Comparative Effectiveness of 2 Interventions for Hispanic Caregivers of Persons with Dementia.

Objectives: To compare the effectiveness of 2 caregiver interventions with known efficacy: the Resources for Enhancing Caregiver Health-Offering Useful Treatment (REACH-OUT) and the New York University Caregiver Intervention (NYUCI).

Design: 1:1 randomized pragmatic trial.

Setting: New York City.

Racial and ethnic differences in psychotropic medication use among community-dwelling persons with dementia in the United States.

Objectives: Little is known about the patterns of psychotropic medication use in community-dwelling minority persons with dementia (PWD). The purpose of this study was to investigate racial/ethnic differences in psychotropic medication use across a diverse population of community-dwelling PWD and to examine the extent to which caregiver characteristics influence this use.

Method: Data were drawn from the baseline assessment of the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health II trial.

Northern Manhattan Hispanic Caregiver Intervention Effectiveness Study: protocol of a pragmatic randomised trial comparing the effectiveness of two established interventions for informal caregivers of persons with dementia.

Introduction: The prevalence of dementia is increasing without a known cure, resulting in an increasing number of informal caregivers. Caring for a person with dementia results in increased stress and depressive symptoms. There are several behavioural interventions designed to alleviate stress and depressive symptoms in caregivers of persons with dementia with evidence of efficacy.

Caregiver and care recipient characteristics as predictors of psychotropic medication use in community-dwelling dementia patients.

Objectives: The current practice of prescribing psychotropic medication for the management of dementia-related behavioral disturbances is under substantial debate. Using Pearlin's stress process model as theoretical underpinning, the aim of this investigation is to identify caregiver and care recipient characteristics as predictors of anxiolytic, antipsychotic, and antidepressant use among community-dwelling dementia patients. We hypothesized that caregiving burden and patient characteristics, particularly behavior disturbances and pain, would be positively associated with psychotropic medication use.

Report on milestones for care and support under the U.S. National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease.

Introduction: Under the U.S. national Alzheimer's plan, the National Institutes of Health identified milestones required to meet the plan's biomedical research goal (Goal 1).

"It Was Very Rewarding for Me …": Senior Volunteers' Experiences With Implementing a Reminiscence and Creative Activity Intervention.

Purpose Of The Study: To describe the experience of recruiting, training, and retaining retired senior volunteers (RSVs) as interventionists delivering a successful reminiscence and creative activity intervention to community-dwelling palliative care patients and their caregivers.

Design And Methods: A community-based participatory research framework involved Senior Corps RSV programs. Recruitment meetings and feedback groups yielded interested volunteers, who were trained in a 4-hr session using role plays and real-time feedback.

Can senior volunteers deliver reminiscence and creative activity interventions? Results of the legacy intervention family enactment randomized controlled trial.

Context: Palliative care patients and their family caregivers may have a foreshortened perspective of the time left to live, or the expectation of the patient's death in the near future. Patients and caregivers may report distress in physical, psychological, or existential/spiritual realms.

Objectives: To conduct a randomized controlled trial examining the effectiveness of retired senior volunteers (RSVs) in delivering a reminiscence and creative activity intervention aimed at alleviating palliative care patient and caregiver distress.

Preserving Identity and Planning for Advance Care (PIPAC): preliminary outcomes from a patient-centered intervention for individuals with mild dementia.

Objectives: The purpose of this pilot study was to conduct limited-efficacy testing of the newly developed Preserving Identity and Planning for Advance Care (PIPAC) intervention on self-reported and proxy-reported emotional and health-related outcomes of individuals in the early stages of dementia.

Method: A two-group comparison design was implemented. Blocked randomization was used to assign individuals with mild dementia and a family contact to either (1) the four-session, multi-component intervention group focused on reminiscence and future planning or (2) the minimal support phone contact comparison group.

Predicting desire for institutional placement among racially diverse dementia family caregivers: the role of quality of care.

Purpose: Literature on institutionalization of patients with dementia has not considered the role of caregivers' quality of care, which encompasses caregivers' exemplary care (EC) behaviors and caregivers' potentially harmful behaviors (PHBs) toward care recipients. This study sought to understand the role of quality of care in mediating between caregiving stressors and caregiver desire to institutionalize (DTI) a patient with dementia.

Design And Methods: A sample of 612 family caregivers from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds was drawn from the baseline data of the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Heath (REACH II) project.

Exemplary care as a mediator of the effects of caregiver subjective appraisal and emotional outcomes.

Purpose: Exemplary care (EC) is a new construct encompassing care behaviors that warrants further study within stress process models of dementia caregiving. Previous research has examined EC within the context of cognitively intact older adult care recipients (CRs) and their caregivers (CGs). This study sought to expand our knowledge of quality of care by investigating EC within a diverse sample of dementia CGs.

Alive and well: the state of behavioral gerontology in 2011.

In this paper, the authors present a brief personal account of the senior author's 30 years of exploration in behavioral gerontology. The main thesis of the paper is that behavioral methods and interventions have found a home both in mainstream gerontology and at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There are three sections: (a) a personal vignette discussing the problems inherent in using operant terminology in a nonoperant world; (b) a discussion, with examples from NIH sources, of the Institutes' views on behavior change; and (c) using Burgio and Burgio (1986) as a reference point, the authors show evidence of progress and vitality of behavioral gerontology in 2011.

The use of Morycz's desire-to-institutionalize scale across three racial/ethnic groups.

Objective: The objectives of this study were to assess the dimensionality and reliability of a frequently used scale for predicting the desire to institutionalize among White, African American, and Hispanic caregivers of persons with dementia.

Method: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and reliability analyses were performed on a slightly modified version of Morycz's (1985) Desire to Institutionalize (DTI) scale separately for each racial group using data from the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) II study (Belle et al., 2006).

Predictors of need-driven behaviors in nursing home residents with dementia and associated certified nursing assistant burden.

Objective: We examined predictors of staff-reported need-driven behaviors and resistiveness to care in nursing home residents with dementia and predictors of certified nursing assistant (CNA) burden related to both constructs. Background and proximal factors from the need-driven dementia-compromised behavior model [Algase, D.L.

Disentangling the translational sciences: a social science perspective.

In this article the author first attempts to disentangle a number of issues in translational science from a social science perspective. As expected in a fledgling field of study being approached from various disciplines, there are marked differences in the research literature on terminology, definition of terms, and conceptualization of staging of clinical research from the pilot phase to widespread dissemination in the community. The author asserts that translational efforts in the social sciences are at a crossroads, and its greatest challenge involves the movement of interventions gleaned from clinical trials to community settings.

Enhancing caregiver health: findings from the resources for enhancing Alzheimer's caregiver health II intervention.

Objectives: To examine the relationships between changes from baseline to post-Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) intervention in caregiver (CG) self-reported health, burden, and bother.

Design: Randomized, multisite clinical trial.

Setting: CG and care recipient (CR) homes in five U.

Examining the effectiveness of traditional audiological assessments for nursing home residents with dementia-related behaviors.

Background: It is currently estimated that the resident population of individuals over the age of 65 living in nursing homes will double by 2020. Nearly one-third of all nursing home residents have difficulty seeing or hearing, 46% have some form of dementia, and 30-84% of those with dementia in nursing homes show some form of agitation. Nursing home residents who do not receive appropriate audiological services may experience social isolation, cognitive decline and decreased mobility.

Development of the risk appraisal measure: a brief screen to identify risk areas and guide interventions for dementia caregivers.

Objectives: To develop and validate a brief screening measure for use in research, healthcare, and community settings to systematically assess well-being and identify needed areas of support for caregivers of patients with dementia.

Design: This study used data from Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH II), a multisite randomized clinical trial of a behavioral intervention designed to improve the quality of life of caregivers in multiple domains.

Setting: REACH II.

Testing a theoretical model of the stress process in Alzheimer's caregivers with race as a moderator.

Purpose: The primary aim of this study was to test the stress process model (SPM; Pearlin, Mullan, Semple, & Skaff, 1990) in a racially diverse sample of Alzheimer's caregivers (CGs) using structural equation modeling (SEM) and regression techniques. A secondary aim was to examine race or ethnicity as a moderator of the relation between latent constructs (e.g.

Translating the REACH caregiver intervention for use by area agency on aging personnel: the REACH OUT program.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to translate the evidence-based Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) II intervention for use in 4 Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs). A secondary aim was to examine possible moderators of treatment outcome.

Design And Methods: We used a quasi-experimental pre-post treatment design with no control group.

Perceived income inadequacy as a predictor of psychological distress in Alzheimer's caregivers.

The authors examined perceived income inadequacy as a predictor of self-reported depressive symptomatology and anxiety in the original sites of the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health I project. Perceived income inadequacy, self-reported household income, and control factors (e.g.

The influences of gender and religiousness on Alzheimer disease caregivers' use of informal support and formal services.

Objective. This study explored how male and female family caregivers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients differ in their use of formal services and informal support and how religiousness may affect such differences. Methods.

The four-factor model of depressive symptoms in dementia caregivers: a structural equation model of ethnic differences.

Previous studies have suggested that 4 latent constructs (depressed affect, well-being, interpersonal problems, somatic symptoms) underlie the item responses on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale. This instrument has been widely used in dementia caregiving research, but the fit of this multifactor model and the explanatory contributions of multifactor models have not been sufficiently examined for caregiving samples. The authors subjected CES-D data (N = 1,183) from the initial Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health Study to confirmatory factor analysis methods and found that the 4-factor model provided excellent fit to the observed data.