Rural Dementia Caregiver Project

Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Online Small-Group Self-Management Workshop for Rural Caregivers of Individuals With Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

Rural caregivers face challenges of geographic isolation and lower health care access and quality. Many rural dementia caregivers experience serious health consequences due to caregiving responsibilities that can limit their ability to maintain their caregiving role. Thus, there is a pressing need for effective, scalable, and accessible programs to support rural dementia caregivers.

Online programs offer a convenient and readily translatable option for program delivery because they can be accessed by caregivers in the home and at the convenience of the user. Building Better Caregivers is an online 6-week, interactive, small-group self-management, social support, and skills-building workshop developed for caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's disease or related dementia.

The investigators will conduct a hybrid effectiveness-implementation randomized controlled trial that will enroll and randomize 640 rural dementia caregivers into two groups: the intervention (workshop) group and the attention control group. Caregivers will be recruited throughout the United States. Primary outcomes will be caregiver stress and depressive symptoms. The investigators hypothesize that stress scores and depressive symptoms will be significantly improved at 12 months in the intervention group versus control group. The investigators will also identify key strengths (facilitators) and weaknesses (barriers) of workshop implementation. The investigators will use the RE-AIM implementation framework and a mixed methods approach to identify implementation characteristics pertinent to both caregivers and rural community organizations.

If the Building Better Caregivers workshop is proven to be effective, this research has the potential to open new research horizons, particularly on how to reach and effectively support isolated dementia caregivers in rural areas with an intervention that is scalable, even in low-resourced settings. If the workshop can achieve its goals with rural dementia caregivers, some of those most isolated, it would also be expected to be scalable in other low-resourced settings (e.g., in urban or suburban environments).

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Depression; Stress, Psychological; Dementia; Dementia, Vascular; Loneliness; Self Efficacy; Dementia, Mixed; Health Care Utilization; Dementia Alzheimers; Dementia of Alzheimer Type; Social Isolation; Dementia, Multi-Infarct; Dementia, Lewy Body; Dementia in Parkinsons Disease; Dementia Frontal; Dementia Frontotemporal; Dementia, HIV
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Building Better Caregivers Workshop; Behavioral: Attention Control

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 418
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • San Francisco, California, United States, 94118
      • University of California, San Francisco

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Aged 18 years or older
• Caring for person with dementia
• Able to read and write in English
• Able to access the internet
• Providing care for ≥ 10 hours per week
• Reporting a minimum stress level of 4 or more on a 10-point scale
• Living in rural area of United States (self-identify or zip code is a Rural Urban Commuting Area Codes (RUCA) defined rural area)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Have an anticipated inability to complete the 12-month follow-up (e.g., planned travel)

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Double

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Building Better Caregivers Workshop Group; Building Better Caregivers Workshop is a 6-week online self-management and skills building workshop. Participants receive the online workshop as soon as possible after randomization.	Behavioral: Building Better Caregivers Workshop; Workshops consist of small group or about 20-25 persons. Two peer co-facilitators (caregiver themselves) will guide workshop activities. Participants will receive a workshop booklet. Each week, participants will log on at least 2-3 times for a total time of approximately two hours. Participants do not require "real time" attendance at pre-determined times.
Active Comparator: Attention Control Group; Participants will be offered the online workshop after the 12 month trial is completed if they so desire.	Behavioral: Attention Control; Participants will receive two brief 15-30 minutes phone calls by study staff, and will receive a handbook on dementia and caregiver resources while they wait for the workshop.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Personal Health Questionnaire Depression (PHQ-8) Scale Score	Personal Health Questionnaire Depression (PHQ-8) scale. The scale score is calculated by summing each item to produce a total score between 0 and 24, with higher scores indicating worse outcome.	12 months
Visual Numeric Stress Scale	A visual numeric stress scale. The scale score ranges from 0 to 10, with higher score indicating worse outcome.	12 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Personal Health Questionnaire Depression (PHQ-8) Scale Score	Personal Health Questionnaire Depression (PHQ-8) scale. The scale score is calculated by summing each item to produce a total score between 0 and 24, with higher scores indicating worse outcome.	6 months
Visual Numeric Stress Scale Score	A visual numeric stress scale. The scale score ranges from 0 to 10, with higher score indicating worse outcome.	6 months
Short Caregiver Self-Efficacy Scale Score	Short Caregiver Self-Efficacy scale (8-items). The scale scores is calculated by taking the mean of the items to produce a total score between 1 and 10, with higher scores indicating better outcome.	12 months
Zarit Burden Interview-12 (ZBI-12) Scale Score	Short form of the Zarit Burden Interview-12 (ZBI-12) scale (12-items). The scale score is calculated by summing each item to produce a total score between 0 and 24, with higher scores indicating worse outcome.	12 months
Caregiver Self-rated General Health Score	Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) measure SF-1 self-rated general health single item. The scale score ranges from 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating worse outcome.	12 months
UCLA Loneliness Scale Score	UCLA loneliness scale (3-items). The scale score is calculated by summing each item to produce a total score between 3 and 9, with higher scores indicating worse outcome.	12 months
Lubben Social Isolation Scale Score	Lubben Social isolation scale (6-items). The scale score is calculated by summing each item to produce a total score between 0 and 30, with lower scores indicating worse outcome.	12 months
Caregiver Health Care Utilization	3-items measuring days of overnight hospitalizations, nursing home or other long-term care facility use, and hospital emergency room visits from the Health and Retirement Study, modified time frame from self-report for past 12 months to self-report for past 6 months; scored as single items; with higher scores indicating worse outcome. Scores range from 0-180.	12 months
Person With Dementia General Health Score as Reported by Caregiver	Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) measure SF-1 caregiver-reported general health single item. The scale score ranges from 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating worse outcome.	12 months

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in caregiver benefits scale score from baseline to 12 months	4-items measuring potential benefits of caregiving (e.g., providing care made caregiver feel useful, closer to care partner, good about self, and allowed caregiver to learn new skills) from the Health and Retirement Study. The scale score is calculated by summing each item to produce a total score between 0 and 4, with higher scores indicating better outcome.	Baseline and 12 months
Change in exercise behavior scale score from baseline to 12 months	6-items measuring exercise behaviors. Exercise behaviors include stretching/strengthening; walking; swimming/aquatic; bicycling (including stationary bikes); other aerobic exercise equipment (stairmaster, rowing, etc.); or other aerobic exercise. The scale score is calculated by summing each item to produce a total score between 0 and 1080, with higher scores indicating better outcome.	Baseline and 12 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of California, San Francisco
• Collaborators: National Institute on Aging (NIA)
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Veronica Yank, MD, University of California, San Francisco

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): June 5, 2020
• Primary Completion (Actual): October 16, 2023
• Study Completion (Actual): October 16, 2023

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 9, 2020
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 9, 2020
• First Posted (Actual): June 11, 2020

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): July 17, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 27, 2025
• Last Verified: June 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Caregiver; Caregiving
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Synucleinopathies; Neurologic Manifestations; Cerebrovascular Disorders; Brain Diseases; Central Nervous System Diseases; Nervous System Diseases; Vascular Diseases; Cardiovascular Diseases; Mental Disorders; Pathologic Processes; Genetic Diseases, Inborn; Metabolic Diseases; Behavioral Symptoms; Neurobehavioral Manifestations; Neurocognitive Disorders; Brain Infarction; Brain Ischemia; Infarction; Necrosis; Tauopathies; Neurodegenerative Diseases; Movement Disorders; Parkinsonian Disorders; Basal Ganglia Diseases; TDP-43 Proteinopathies; Proteostasis Deficiencies; Arteriosclerosis; Arterial Occlusive Diseases; Ischemia; Leukoencephalopathies; Intracranial Arteriosclerosis; Intracranial Arterial Diseases; Stroke; Communication Disorders; Cerebral Arterial Diseases; Language Disorders; Aphasia; Speech Disorders; Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration; Cerebral Infarction; Cerebral Small Vessel Diseases; Alzheimer Disease; Parkinson Disease; Dementia; Frontotemporal Dementia; Aphasia, Primary Progressive; Pick Disease of the Brain; Dementia, Vascular; Stress, Psychological; Lewy Body Disease; CADASIL; Dementia, Multi-Infarct
• Other Study ID Numbers: 18-25814; 5R01AG057855-02 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract); 3R01AG057855-02S1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: The data to be shared will be individual participant data that underlie the results reported in published article(s), after deidentification (e.g., text, tables, figures, and appendices). The additional and related documents that will be available are study protocol and data dictionary. The data will become available beginning within 3 months of article publication and ending 5 years following article publication.The access criteria for the data to be shared will include researchers who provide a methodologically sound proposal in order to achieve aims in the approved proposal including performance of meta-analysis of individual participant data. Proposals should be directed to veronica.yank@ucsf.edu. To gain access, data requestors will need to sign a data access agreement. Data will be available for 5 years at a third party website (Link to be included later).
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: The data will become available beginning within 3 months of article publication and ending 5 years following article publication.
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: The access criteria for the data to be shared will include researchers who provide a methodologically sound proposal in order to achieve aims in the approved proposal including performance of meta-analysis of individual participant data. Proposals should be directed to veronica.yank@ucsf.edu. To gain access, data requestors will need to sign a data access agreement. Data will be available for 5 years at a third party website (Link to be included later).
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No