2024 American Academy of Neurology Abstract Website

Objective:

To provide a single source of reliable, vetted dementia education resources available to all dementia caregivers.

Background:

The 11 million unpaid caregivers for those with dementia provide over 16 billion hours of unpaid care, many without any formal dementia education or support. Family caregivers living in rural and other under-resourced areas face additional barriers in accessing specialty dementia care, education, and support which further impacts caregiver strain. While healthcare providers routinely provide education to their caregivers, in this digital age, many caregivers and clinicians supplement with information, resources, and support from the internet. However, not all resources available online are scrutinized to ensure information accuracy or to consider the health literacy skills, technology skills, and cognitive and sensory skills of the audience.

Design/Methods:

To address this gap, our interdisciplinary team of dementia clinicians used an iterative process to create a Dementia Caregiver Resources Website to serve as a user-friendly compendium of high-quality, peer-reviewed, dementia care educational resources tailored for an informal caregiving audience. A post-launch survey explored the site’s usability and utility.

Results:

The final website included 130 resources organized into 10 categories, 34 subcategories and averages >1,100 visits per month. Among the 60 clinician survey respondents, most (98%) agreed or strongly agreed that the website was easy to navigate and all (100%) respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the resources were useful.

Conclusions:

By creating an easy-to-navigate website with dementia resources that have been evaluated and vetted by content experts, all clinicians and family caregivers now have access to a curated compendium of educational resources to address the numerous challenges facing individuals with dementia and their caregivers. [https://tinyurl.com/nhkax2rv]