Oddone, Eugene Z.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of Helping Invested Families Improve Veterans' Experiences Study (HI-FIVES), a skills training program for caregivers of persons with functional or cognitive impairments. Design: A two-arm RCT. Setting: Single Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Participants: Patients and their primary caregivers referred in the past 6 months to home and community-based services or geriatrics clinic. Intervention: All caregivers received usual care.

This study aimed to examine the early impact of the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers (PCAFC) on Veteran health care utilization and costs. A pre-post cohort design including a nonequivalent control group was used to understand how Veterans' use of Veteran Affairs health care and total health care costs changed in 6-month intervals up to 3 years after PCAFC enrollment. The control group was an inverse probability of treatment weighted sample of Veterans whose caregivers applied for, but were not accepted into, PCAFC.

Background and aims: Since May 2011, over 23 000 caregivers of Veterans seriously injured on or after September 11, 2001 have enrolled in the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers (PCAFC). PCAFC provides caregivers training, a stipend, and access to health care. The aim of this study is to describe the characteristics of caregivers in PCAFC and examine associations between caregiver characteristics and caregiver well-being outcomes.; Methods: We sent a web survey invitation to 10 000 PCAFC caregivers enrolled as of September 2015.