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Strategies to Achieve Alignment, Collaboration, and Synergy across Delivery and Financing Systems: Integrating Health and Social Services for Veterans by Empowering Family Caregivers
Webinar

Integrating Health and Social Services for Veterans by Empowering Family Caregivers

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This webinar features a research project that investigates the effect of institutional support for family caregivers on veterans’ use of vocational rehabilitation and educational social services.

Injured war veterans face substantial barriers to maintaining employment, high levels of family strain, homelessness, and extensive unmet physical and mental health needs. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) offers a range of medical, public health, and social services to eligible veterans; however, these services reside within distinct bureaus leading to service fragmentation, poor alignment with veteran needs, and variability in access across medical centers.

Federal funding was approved in 2010 to establish a national program to provide veterans’ caregivers with training on how to navigate the VA system, function as a care team member, and improve clinical skills. Evidence from the initial group of enrollees showed that veterans whose family caregivers participated in the program utilized more primary, specialty, and mental health services than did those whose caregivers did not participate. While use of health services increased, data regarding the influence of family caregivers on veterans’ use of social services is still needed.

Study findings will elucidate key contextual and scalable features of institutional support for family caregivers that can reduce system inefficiencies through improved services coordination.

Publication

Networks of Support Help Patients Navigate Complex Systems

This publication examines how a health system in Minnesota empowers patients by giving them resources to address their health-related social needs.

Webinar

Closing Gaps in Health and Social Services for Low-Income Pregnant Women

This webinar explores the effectiveness of the Los Angeles Maternity Assessment Management Access and Service initiative.

Publication

Development and Validation of a Measure to Assess Readiness to Advance Health and Equity: The Assessment for Advancing Community Transformation

This publication reports on the development and validation of the Assessment for Advancing Community Transformation - a tool that allows groups to directly collect and use data about their multi-sector collaborative by creating a shared point of reference for where partners are at in their stage of development across multiple factors.