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Mental health
Protocol
The Northern Manhattan Caregiver Intervention Project: a randomised trial testing the effectiveness of a dementia caregiver intervention in Hispanics in New York City
  1. José Luchsinger1,
  2. Mary Mittelman2,
  3. Miriam Mejia3,
  4. Stephanie Silver4,
  5. Robert J Lucero5,
  6. Mildred Ramirez4,
  7. Jian Kong4,
  8. Jeanne A Teresi4
  1. 1Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA
  2. 2Department of Psychiatry, New York University, New York, New York, USA
  3. 3Alianza Dominicana, New York, New York, USA
  4. 4Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Research Division—Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale and Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York, USA
  5. 5School of Nursing, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr José A Luchsinger; jal94{at}columbia.edu

Abstract

Objectives Dementia prevalence and its burden on families are increasing. Caregivers of persons with dementia have more depression and stress than the general population. Several interventions have proven efficacy in decreasing depression and stress in selected populations of caregivers. Hispanics in New York City tend to have a higher burden of dementia caregiving compared to non-Hispanic whites (NHW) because Hispanics have a higher prevalence of dementia, tend to have high family involvement, and tend to have higher psychosocial and economic stressors. Thus, we chose to test the effectiveness of a dementia caregiving intervention, the New York University Caregiver Intervention (NYUCI), with demonstrated efficacy in spouse caregivers in Hispanic relative caregivers of persons with dementia. Including the community health worker (CHW) intervention in both arms alleviates general psychosocial stressors and allows the assessment of the effectiveness of the intervention. Compared to two original efficacy studies of the NYUCI, which included only spouse caregivers, our study includes all relative caregivers, including common law spouses, children, siblings, a nephew and nieces. This study will be the first randomised trial to test the effectiveness of the NYUCI in Hispanic caregivers including non-spouses.

Methods and analysis The design of the study is a randomised controlled trial (RCT). Participants are randomised to two arms: case management by a CHW and an intervention arm including the NYUCI in addition to case management by the CHW. The duration of intervention is 6 months. The main outcomes in the trial are changes in the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the Zarit Caregiver Burden Scale (ZCBS) from baseline to 6 months.

Ethics and dissemination This trial is approved by the Columbia University Medical Center Institutional Review Board (AAAI0022), and funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The funding agency has no role in dissemination.

Trial Registration  www.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01306695.

  • Mental Health

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2012-001941

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