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Supporting Caregivers of Veterans Online: A Partnership of the National Council on Aging and VA

The National Council on Aging’s Building Better Caregivers program aims to improve the well-being of caregivers of veterans.
Federal Practitioner. 2016 January;33(01):41-46
January 20, 2016|Federal Practitioner
Nancy J. Dupke, MSW;Kathryn L. Plant, MPH;Julie Kosteas, MPH
Author and Disclosure Information

Ms. Dupke is a national program manager for the VA Caregiver Support Program in Washington, DC. Ms. Plant is director of Self-Management Services at Canary Health in Los Angeles, California. At the time this article was written Ms. Kosteas was a program manager at the National Council on Aging in Washington, DC.

Author disclosures
The authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the U.S. Government, or any of its agencies. This article may discuss unlabeled or investigational use of certain drugs. Please review the complete prescribing information for specific drugs or drug combinations—including indications, contraindications, warnings, and adverse effects—before administering pharmacologic therapy to patients.

How It Works

The BBC program, developed at Stanford University, is a 6-week workshop offered on a dedicated website. Each workshop is composed of 20 to 25 caregivers. The workshop is moderated by 2 trained facilitators—at least 1 of whom is a caregiver. Facilitators and participants together address a number of topics, including managing difficult care partner behaviors and emotions, reducing stress for the caregiver, self-care methods to improve the caregiver’s health, making decisions, finding additional help and resources, and planning for the future. Weekly activities include reading and applying new knowledge through a rich content learning center; making and posting a weekly action plan, brainstorming, problem solving, and celebrating milestones with fellow participants via 4 directed bulletin boards; and participating in any appropriate self-tests and activities.

 

There is no real-time attendance, so caregivers can choose the time of day and days of the week that are convenient to them to log in and participate.

The learning center is self-directed. Participants can control the speed and timing of their progress. The bulletin boards are not live so comments can be posted at any time (Figure 2). The program can be used by anyone who has access to the Internet, including those who do not have access to high-speed connections.

VA/NCOA Partnership

An exclusive license to disseminate this program and other online programs developed and tested at Stanford is held by NCOA. In licensing the program, NCOA also offers technical assistance, training, and technologic support needed to implement and sustain the program. Following the success of the BBC pilot, VA worked with NCOA to implement the program under its CSP.

The NCOA has over a decade of experience in disseminating evidence-based programs and working with organizations at the federal, state, and local level to embed these programs into organizations so that they become standard practice and are sustainable. It also has several years of experience in disseminating programs online. The VA is a leading organization in caregiver support services and has built a national CSP that reaches tens of thousands of caregivers.

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