Faculty member and principle investigator Carolyn Thorpe has been awarded a pilot grant from the VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion and VISN 4 VA Healthcare Network, entitled, Supporting Medication Adherence in Veterans with Dementia and their Caregivers. School of Pharmacy faculty member Joshua Thorpe and Michelle Rossi from the Division of Geriatric Medicine are co-investigators.
The long-term goal of this research is to generate strategies to include in a comprehensive intervention to support medication adherence in community-dwelling patients with dementia and their informal caregivers. The pilot project will test the feasibility and effect of incorporating a structured assessment of the dementia patient's capacity to self-manage medications into VA geriatrics outpatient care, and identify the most common and influential barriers and facilitators to supporting the patient's medication adherence experienced by caregivers of patients with dementia.
