For Immediate Release
Contact: Toni Gingerelli, Associate Director of Policy & Advocacy
toni@caregiving.org, 202-697-8204
WASHINGTON DC, September 22, 2023 — The National Alliance for Caregiving has been awarded a $2 million cooperative agreement from the Administration for Community Living (ACL) to advance a national research and data collection strategy focused on America’s growing community of family caregivers.
“Having high-quality, inclusive, and consistent data is key to improving our national efforts to support family caregivers through better policy and program design,” said Jason Resendez, CEO and President of the National Alliance for Caregiving. “We are thrilled to partner with ACL to bring to life the vision outlined in our National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers to expand the data available on caregivers and the often-undervalued work of caregiving.”
53 million Americans provide unpaid care to family members, friends, and loved ones who are aging or who are living with a serious medical condition, illness, or disability. Data on the experiences and needs of this growing community is fragmented, inconsistent, and homogenous.
This cooperative agreement is part of $20 million in new funding announced by ACL to support the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, the nation’s first whole-of-society blueprint to address the needs of America’s unpaid family caregivers.
NAC will establish the Creating and Advancing Caregiving Research and Evidence Network (CARE Network) to strengthen the nation’s infrastructure for developing and conducting family caregiving research.
“Family caregivers are essential to healthy aging as more and more Americans express a distinct desire to age in their homes and communities,” said Sandy Markwood, CEO of USAging. “We are excited to partner with the National Alliance for Caregiving to ensure the aging network has the research capacity it needs to better serve family caregivers.”
In partnership with a diverse network of collaborators including, USAging; Emory University; University of Pittsburgh National Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Family Support; University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ujima United, LLC, the CARE Network will serve as a hub for building research capacity across the nation’s aging service providers and beyond.
The CARE Network will:
- Support the expansion of research centering family caregivers served across the National Family Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP) and Native American Caregiver Support Program (NACSP) network.
- Support the collection of population-based data about the needs of family caregivers.
- Support the development of consistent language to define caregiving across national and state-based data initiatives.
- Center the voices of family caregivers to ensure national research activities are co-created with, and meet the diverse needs of, family caregivers and the programs that serve them.
“Decisionmakers at the local, state, and national level need reliable data on the challenges and experiences of family caregivers to better serve this essential yet underrecognized workforce,” said Regina Shih, Ph.D., Professor of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. “I’m looking forward to working with this team to move the field of caregiving research forward.”
About The National Alliance for Caregiving
Established in 1996, the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) is a national membership-based organization focused on building health, wealth, and equity for family caregivers through research, system change programming, and advocacy. We envision a society that values, supports, and empowers family caregivers to thrive at home, work, and life. Learn more at https://www.caregiving.org.