AGENCY AND COMMUNITY RESOURCES

Evidence-Based Interventions

RCI's goal is to support development of Quality Care in long-term, home and community-based services. We believe that increase the use of "science that works" is a critical part of this work. Evidence-based interventions in our view have the greatest chance of improving the health and well being of caregivers and serve as the foundation for quality care. Research and experience have shown the difficulty of translating evidence-based interventions into public health practice and policy, however. As a result, our aim is to facilitate the process of moving science to practice and building effective bridges between researchers and caregivers.

We define evidence-based to mean that an intervention has undergone sufficient scientific evaluation to be proven to be effective and strongly linked to desirable outcomes such as reductions in caregivers' depressive symptoms and increases in measures of coping. Not all evidence-based interventions are effective in practice. A program may be ineffective for many reasons; it may be poorly implemented, provided at too low a "dose", have no followup or those implementing it may be poorly trained in how to deliver the intervention. Interventions may also work with some populations, but not others, or under certain conditions, but not others. This is why an ongoing program of research and evaluation is needed to develop an intervention and test it under "real world" conditions. Find out what effective caregiver programs have in common.

We define "intervention" to mean an intentional action (singular or multiple) designed for an individual or a community that alters a behavior, reduces risk or improves outcomes for caregivers and care-receivers.

RCI does not endorse any particular intervention. Instead, we urge administrators to study available interventions before they select one to implement. The Resource Center of studies and interventions on our site is a useful starting point in that process. The list of interventions is continually being updated and we welcome submission of information about interventions that are not listed. Ultimately, administrators must make decisions about which interventions to select based on information that may go beyond what is on our intervention grid. That information will include consideration of overall effectiveness, costs, appropriateness for the community, and what is already in place. We offer this Resource Center as a useful starting point for looking at some available interventions for caregivers.

Description of Online Resource Center