BC Care Providers Association recently sat down with Dr. Janice Keefe, Mount Saint Vincent University professor and Director of the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging, to hear about her newest research project which will be funded through a $860,000 Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) grant. This highly competitive grant will help Dr. Keefe and her team understand the home care experiences of older adult clients with chronic and long-term conditions.
“We are trying to understand home care from the inside out,” says Dr. Keefe, who will be looking at longitudinal data spanning 6 years, in order to comprehend the pathways clients take as they enter into home care, as well as their experiences once they are receiving support.
This project will also consider what policy implications findings might have for home care in Canada.
“We will be looking at this information from a systems perspective, so we can begin to consider how the jurisdiction a person is living in affects their experiences with home care,” says Keefe.
Dr. Keefe will be partnering with a wide variety of academic and governmental partners, including the Nova Scotia Health Authority, University of Manitoba, Dalhousie University, Saint Mary’s University, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and other policy and practice stakeholders such as Northwood, Nova Scotia Department of Health & Wellness, Manitoba Caregiver Coalition, Caregivers Nova Scotia, Canadian Home Care Association and Health Canada.
The project, which starts next month, will be focused on home care in Nova Scotia and Manitoba, with a specific focus on publicly-subsidized care. However, Dr. Keefe feels that the findings will very likely have implications for other provinces.
Knowledge translation is a significant component of this multi-method, multi-site project, and the research project has been designed as to capture the perspectives of home care users, caregivers and front-line workers throughout the process.
BCCPA looks forward to following Dr. Keefe and her team as they embark on this timely and important project.
