HSR&D Merit Review Research Career Scientist Award

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This proposed Research Career Scientist award is to support the activities of Dr. Courtney Van Houtven, who is an experienced Department of Veterans Affairs investigator, allowing her to expand her scientific, men- toring, and service contributions. Dr. Van Houtven leads research studies that test care models to improve the function and independence of older adults with functional limitations and the function of their informal caregivers. The overarching goal of her research agenda is to enable at-risk Veterans to remain at home as safely as pos- sible and for as long as possible. This research is important because there are 9.8 million Veterans over age 65 and 5.5 million Veterans receive informal care in order to remain at home. The majority of Dr. Van Houtven’s research has been conducted in the VA healthcare system. Dr. Van Houtven used a VA HSR&D funded Career Development Award to gain mentorship and training to design and test interventions. Her 116 published articles are in top-tier health economics, health services research, and geriatrics journals. A Google Scholar query shows that her work has earned 4,011 citations with an h-index of 28 (8/2020). Dr. Van Houtven has led or co-led five VA studies, representing over $13 million in VA grant funding, and been co-I on 13 VA studies. Her research contributions include testing the effectiveness of a skills training program for caregivers of Veteran patients with functional impairment in an RCT, called HI-FIVES (JGIM 2019). An adapted version of HI-FIVES called iHI-FIVES has been implemented at 8 VA sites using a stepped wedge cluster ran- domized RCT as a part of the Optimizing Function and Independence QUERI. The Program Office has requested that iHI-FIVES be a part of its performance standards to expand services to caregivers. Additionally, Dr. Van Houtven directs the partnered evaluation of the VA Caregiver Support Program with a team from Durham ADAPT and the VA National Caregiver Support Program. Over the past six years, she has measured program impacts and provided feedback to the program office detailing how the program is improving the lives of caregivers and Veterans and where the program can improve. Besides publishing 10 articles for the evaluation program, she supported congressional testimony of the SecVA (2017) and filled rapid requests from Program Office leaders. In addition to Dr. Van Houtven’s research activities, she is helping build the next generation of VA researchers through mentoring. Today she mentors 4 VA CDAs (2 as primary, 2 as co-mentor), 1 K-awardee, and has served on 10 dissertation committees. Her VA service engagement includes contributions to VA Caregiver Sup- port Program strategic planning, chairing the metrics committee of the Choose Home Initiative, performing grant reviews for HSR&D/QUERI, and participating in SOTAs and special VA initiatives. Her professional stature can be assessed by national and international invited talks, such as from the National Academies of Sciences, En- gineering, and Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and London School of Economics; through impactful pub- lications (e.g. senior author on HSR&D 2017 article of the year, Thorpe et al); and, activities such as her coedi- torships, such as at Medical Care Research and Review. In 2019 she co-founded the VA Caregiver Collabora- tive, comprising of leading VA caregiver researchers. Dr. Van Houtven is recognized internationally as the lead- ing scholar in economics of informal care research. The protected time allowed by a Research Career Scientist award will allow her to expand her contributions to the VA HSR&D mission, with a focus on improving care for Veterans with functional impairments and the lives of caregivers. Dr. Van Houtven’s proposed activities for the award period include: 1) leveraging the Function and Independence Core in the Durham COIN to expand the VA Caregiver Collaborative; 2) advancing methods in person-centered measurement and advancing methods in economic evaluation of implementation studies; and, 3) recruiting, training and mentoring fellows and early career investigators to build expertise in care models for functionally impaired Veterans and caregivers, especially focused on health equity.