Intervention to Help Orient Men to Excel (IN-HOME): A culturally appropriate CHW training program to reduce minority caregiver burden

KDH Research and Communication (KDHRC) proposes to develop and evaluate Intervention to Help Orient Men to Excel (IN-HOME), which will train community health workers (CHW) to support African American and Latino male caregivers of older adults. IN-HOME-trained CHWs will conduct outreach with caregivers who will gain the knowledge and skills to protect their own health and optimize outcomes for the older adults in turn.Caregiving is more common in racial and ethnically diverse populations than in white populations. While cultural underpinnings may make caregiving more common, service as a caregiver can nonetheless have negative consequences, with a substantial risk of negative emotional, mental, and physical health outcomes. And although numbering in the millions, male minority caregivers are generally overlooked by current supportive resources.CHWs are ideally positioned to educate and support diverse caregivers due to deeply established connections to their communities and the proven effectiveness of CHW outreach for positive behavior change, including reaching men with health-changing information and skills- development. Therefore, IN-HOME will train CHWs to conduct effective outreach to male minority caregivers, empowering such caregivers with self-care strategies and skills to benefit the older adults they care for.The IN-HOME prototype will consist of the introduction and two full online course lessons with text, animatics, and rough-cut interactive learning experiences. In Phase I, we will develop the IN- HOME prototype with feedback from a steering committee in alignment with CHW best practices, the needs of African American and Latino male caregivers, and scientifically accurate information. We will evaluate the IN-HOME prototype in a randomized, two-group study that empirically assesses knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy among CHWs to equip informal caregivers to support older adults and implement self-care strategies after prototype exposure. The Phase I project will prepare us for Phase II expansion and a rigorous randomized controlled trial of the impact of CHW outreach on minority male caregivers. When complete, IN-HOME will be marketed through KDHRC’s robust sales system that uses email and interpersonal outreach to promote and support adoption of our suite of CHW/promotores training programs. IN-HOME is innovative because it will reach an underserved, at-need population with a culturally competent intervention that will improve quality of life among minority male caregivers and older adults in their care.