ADVOCACY, POLICY, RESEARCH AND BACK AGAIN: FEEDBACK LOOPS IN FAMILY CAREGIVING Open Access

Family caregiving is a critically important public policy issue that affects individuals, families, and society, and has been a topic of longstanding attention in the advocacy, policy, and research communities. This session will discuss feedback loops between advocacy, policy, and research and the synergies that each of these perspectives bring to bear in motivating public policy change, drawing on the recent National Academies’ report Families Caring for an Aging America as a case study. The presentation will review criticisms of traditional explanatory research and factors that have generated interest in pragmatic trials and new types of research to demonstrate real-world effectiveness and stimulate systems change in clinical care delivery and practice. The growing importance of understanding and leveraging interconnections between advocacy, policy, and research in setting the policy agenda, as well as opportunities and challenges to research in the current environment, will be explored.