Aliviado is proud to share that our program has been pilot tested with excellent outcomes as part of an NIA funded R56 award, and has recently been published in JAGS (Journal of the American Geriatrics Society)! This study was unique in that it included community health workers as part of the home-based palliative intervention specifically to support persons living with dementia and their care partners. The Community Health Workers completed both our Dementia Care Expert Aide training program and our interdisciplinary skilled training program, coupled with our caregiver education materials to drive education of persons living with dementia at home. This community health worker component was new to Aliviado, and shows some of the flexibility of our program to work within different care models. It was coupled with the rest of our interdisciplinary program that provides training, caregiver education, care plans and a symptom treatment algorithm to the team's physician, NP, social worker and registered nurses. The program also showed clear improvement in knowledge and confidence of the team in caring for persons living with dementia and their care partners.
Based on this work, NIA funded a full randomized clinical trial that is currently ongoing and we look forward in a few years to sharing the results of this study.