Roybal Translational Research Center to Promote Context-Specific Caregiving of Community-Dwelling Persons Living with Alzheimer's Disease or Related Disorders

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Abstract. The overall goal of the Pilot Core of the Center for Translational Research to Promote Context- Specific Caregiving Mastery for Informal Caregivers of Community-Dwelling Persons Living with Alzheimer's Disease or Related Disorders is to move intervention ideas aligned with the Center's consumer-based and context-specific guiding principles successfully through development stages I-III toward real world imple- mentation. Anchored in creative energy of the Center's Design Studio, the Pilot Core will manage an annual pipeline of four processes designed to promote the “success” of pilot interventions: the filtering, selection, support, and advancement of compelling ideas. These processes are meant to support the attainment of the Core's three aims: Aim 1. Evaluate pilot intervention applications and select those with the greatest promise of enhancing context-specific caregiving mastery through early stage interventions that are deemed to be of high impact and significance. Aim 2. Provide oversight, mentoring, and consultation to ensure the successful outcome and dissemination of Center-supported pilot intervention projects. Aim 3. Advance successfully completed pilot projects to secure support for further stages of intervention development either through the Center or through other sources (e.g., NIH research mechanisms). The filtering process is meant to encourage the floating of pilot ideas from researchers drawn from the Center's networks and to guide the most promising through the Center's Design Studio for the sharpening of ideas and the development of pilot proposals. The selection process will involve Center Advisors (Expert, Local, and Consumer) in an NIH-type review of submitted proposals, identifying the 2-4 pilots (principally, but not exclusively single-year Stage I projects) that can be advanced for support, pending NIA review and approval. The support of pilot activities will involve individual mentoring teams of Center leaders and Advisors meeting regularly (by phone or videoconference) with each pilot investigator and quarterly meetings between the investigator and the Center leadership team to monitor progress and provide guidance in addressing challenges that might occur in the course of pilot implementation. The fourth process, pilot advancement, speaks to the key goal of the Center: ensuring that the pilots, the kernels of ideas that are supported by the Center, move through stages of development and become evidence-based interventions that can be widely disseminated. The advancement process begins at the point of pilot implementation with the development of an individualized plan for moving forward to the next stage of development. Within this plan, each investigator and her/his mentoring team periodically engage with the Design Studio to conceptualize and re-conceptualize the strategy for a next-stage proposal. In its first year, the Pilot Core will support the activities of two Stage I pilots, one involving a distance-provided intervention for caregivers of persons living with Primary Progressive Aphasia, the other a group-based program for isolated and stigmatized lesbian/gay/bisexual caregivers of partners, family members, and friends.