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Research

My program of research is organized around interacting themes that have successfully garnered federal and private foundation support, including awards from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Nursing Research, the American Cancer Society, and the T.J. Martell Foundation.

Caregiver-Specific Psychosocial Intervention Development. A primary focus of my research is the development of feasible, acceptable, and targeted psychosocial interventions for caregivers, such as Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy for Caregivers (MCP-C). Despite being a source of suffering, the caregiving experience is concurrently an opportunity to connect to a sense of meaning and purpose, in both caregiving and in life. While caregivers rarely choose to step into the role, once assumed, caregiving allows for the realization of new strengths and capacities, for healing of relationships, refinement of life goals, and an enhanced sense of meaning and purpose. I developed MCP-C to help caregivers connect to a sense of meaning and purpose in caregiving and in life more generally. Through seven sessions that include didactics and structured reflection prompts, caregivers explore how they may continue to connect to what is meaningful to them despite suffering brought on by caregiving. The MCP-C manual was published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Additional interventions for caregivers currently under investigation include Emotion Regulation Therapy for Caregivers, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for PTSD in Caregivers, and a Caregiver Communication Skills Training Program to assist caregivers in engaging in difficult but necessary advance care planning discussions with care partners and healthcare providers.

Research Publications

Representative publications:

 Developing Infrastructure to Support Caregivers. The distress experienced by caregivers has the potential to be mitigated or prevented with proper psychosocial support. However, too often, access-to-care barriers interfere with caregivers receiving critical support services. Although there are many systemic contributors to caregiver utilization of mental health services, infrastructure such as the establishment of separate medical records for caregivers is needed to facilitate caregiver support. Additionally,  while distress screening is a standard practice among patients, to date there are no routine, comprehensive, distress screening programs in practice for caregivers, who typically report greater distress than patients themselves. Screening caregivers for distress, documenting their screening data in their own medical records, and then triaging caregivers to appropriate levels of care will prevent many of the poor outcomes currently prevalent in caregivers. My overall mission for my research moving forward is to ensure that within hospital systems, such a process of caregiver identification, screening, documentation, referral, and support becomes a standard of care .

Representative publications:

 

Supporting Caregivers of Patients Undergoing Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation (HCT) . Over the past decade, much of my work has focused on addressing the unique needs of caregivers of patients undergoing outpatient and homebound HCT. While historically HCTs have been conducted inpatient, there is a push to move recovery from transplants  to the outpatient and homebound settings. These protocols, however, place significant burden and responsibility on caregivers, who must be available and willing to assist for weeks, and often up to the first 100 days post-transplant. There is an urgent need for the adoption of stadnards for screening, education, and support of such caregivers, and interventions that target the unique distrss expereinced by this gorup. Importantly, as we move in this post-pandemic era to icnreased outpatient care and hospital-at-home programs, responsibilities will increasingly shift to family caregivers. As such, this work in the setting of families underoing outpatinet and homebound HCT will extend to a much broader patient and caregiver community. 

Representative publications:

 

Current Clinical Trials: