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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.

Brief

Intermediary Organizations Are Urgently Needed to Assist in Modernizing Public Health and Addressing the Drivers of Health in the United States

This issue brief describes the different roles intermediaries can play; provides examples of where they have been used in practice; and identifies the risks, benefits, and possible innovations of intermediaries as well as policy approaches that might facilitate their appropriate use.

Publication

“More Than Just Giving Them a Piece of Paper”: Interviews with Primary Care on Social Needs Referrals to Community-Based Organizations

This publication characterizes referrals to community-based organizations by primary care practices, which are increasingly being used by healthcare organizations to invest in social care.

Publication

Revising the Foundational Public Health Services in 2022

This publication provides a framework outlining the unique responsibilities of governmental public health and can be used to explain the vital role of governmental public health in a thriving community; identify capacity and resource gaps; determine the cost for assuring foundational activities; and justify funding needs