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Emory nursing research on informal dementia caregiving networks receives $5.5 million NIA grant
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Melanie Kieve
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older adult in living room with extended family

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 11 million Americans provided an estimated 18.4 billion hours of care to adults with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in 2023, and over 65 percent of older adults with dementia rely on two or more family members or friends to meet their needs, ranging from basic activities of daily living to self-care activities and care decisions.

To better understand this reality, the National Institute on Aging has awarded a $5.5 million, five-year R01 grant to an Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing researcher to lead a longitudinal study on how informal caregiving networks affect persons living with dementia (PWD) and their caregivers.

Mi-Kyung Song

Professor Mi-Kyung Song, PhD, RN, FAAN, principal investigator of the grant, says that most caregiving research has previously focused on the roles and burdens of a single primary caregiver. “The study of caregiving needs to expand to consider the substantial collaboration and co-management among multiple caregivers,” she says.

Through the grant, Song and her team will recruit nearly 900 caregiver informants and follow them for over two years to examine the characteristics of caregiving networks of PWD and the impact of informal caregiving networks on caregiver and PWD well-being and health outcomes. 

“Studying social networks over time is extremely rare,” adds Song. “Our results will inform the development of new intervention and strategies to alleviate caregiving burden and improve the health outcomes of caregivers and PWD.”

Research team members include Solveig Cunningham, Sudeshna Paul and Molly Perkins from Emory University; Mary Beth Happ from The Ohio State University; and Lené Levy-Storms from the University of California, Los Angeles.

This research is supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01AG082300. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.


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