Photo by Graham Oliver / Adobe Stock
When people living with dementia need help with everyday functioning like bathing and dressing, most prefer to receive that care in their homes or in community settings. These “home- and community-based services” or HCBS, can include personal care, home health care, and care management services. They are delivered in locations like individuals’ homes, senior centers, adult daycare, and congregate meal sites. There are many gaps in access to, quality of, and costs of HCBS, especially for people with dementia. It is therefore challenging for HCBS researchers, providers, and policymakers to coordinate with each other since HCBS include so many types of services, entities that pay for them, and locations in which care is delivered.
What Is Our Goal?
The Community Care Network for Dementia seeks to
- foster knowledge sharing to advance innovative dementia HCBS research
- generate data tools on structure, process, and outcome measures of dementia HCBS
- grow and diversify the bench of dementia HCBS researchers
- facilitate translation of research into dementia HCBS policy changes
- develop the network infrastructure, products, and mentorship activities through a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) lens.
What Are Our Network Activities?
- Monthly working group meetings
- Quarterly Network meetings
- Annual intensive data workshops
- Research translation and dissemination training seminars
- Mentorship gatherings
- Dementia HCBS Data repository
Network Leadership
Project Director
Regina Shih
Director, Social and Behavioral Policy Program; Senior Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation
Regina Shih (she/her) is an epidemiologist who research focuses on people with dementia and their family and formal caregivers. She is leading an NIMHD-funded project (R01MD010360) to evaluate racial/ethnic and rural/urban disparities in access to home- and community-based services, and she co-leads an evaluation of the CDC BOLD Public Health Center of Excellence-Dementia Caregiving. Her recent work includes examining social networks of older adults and their family caregivers, evaluating the New York State Medicaid Redesign of Section 1115 waivers, understanding unmet needs for Title III B/C services, assessing the quality of Medicaid-sponsored home- and community-based services for older adults in California, and evaluating a shelter program for elder abuse. She serves as an advisory board member of the National Alliance for Caregiving.
Research, Data, and Mentorship Team
Andrew Dick
Senior Economist, RAND Corporation
Andrew Dick is a senior economist who studies the development of methods and empirical applications of risk-adjustment models for quality assessment, comparative effectiveness research, and cost estimation, all with a focus on applied econometric methods for drawing causal inference.
Lori Frank
Senior Vice President, New York Academy of Medicine
Lori Frank is senior vice president for research, policy, and programs at the New York Academy of Medicine. She is a dementia researcher whose work focuses on methods to collect and use input from relevant stakeholders in clinical and policy decisionmaking. She serves on the board of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, and on the Medical, Scientific, and Memory Screening Advisory Board of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, and is Past-President, International Society for Quality of Life Research. Through her leadership positions she mentors others on community-based and stakeholder-engaged research methods.
Esther Friedman
Research Associate Professor, Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Esther Friedman is a research associate professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, where she also serves as associate director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and external innovative networks director of the Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA). Her research broadly focuses on the role of family caregiving and long-term care for the health and wellbeing of older adults, particularly those with dementia. Her current work examines trends in long-term care availability, the impact of long-term care policies on health disparities, and the social networks of older adults and their caregivers.
Jordan Harrison
Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation
Jordan Harrison is a health services researcher whose interests center around the health care workforce, aging, and long-term care. She currently leads a study funded by the National Institute on Aging to evaluate the impact of managed long-term care programs on setting of care for older adults with dementia (R21AG069787). Her recent work includes an issue brief on approaches to assessing the quality of Medicaid-sponsored home- and community-based services for older adults in California.
Daniel Siconolfi
Behavioral and Social Scientist, RAND Corporation
Dan Siconolfi (he/him) is a behavioral scientist. His research portfolio addresses behavioral health, healthy aging, and access to home and community-based services. Focal populations include sexual and gender minority persons, older adults, persons living with or affected by HIV, and persons with dementia. He has mentored undergraduate- and graduate-level researchers across a range of disciplines and research areas.
Administrative Contact
Susan Arick
Administrative Assistant, RAND Corporation
Funding Support
We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Our project is guided and overseen by:
Dr. Priscilla Novak
Project Scientist, NIA
Priscilla Novak manages a health services research portfolio within the Division of Behavioral and Social Research, Population and Social Processes Branch at the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
Elena Fazio
Project Officer, NIA
Dr. Elena Fazio is a Health Scientist Administrator in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging (NIA).