The AWARD Network published a Request for Applications in January 2025, for its second cycle of Pilot Awards. Pilot Awards are intended to support early-stage research on the workforce that serves people living with dementia. This research can be qualitative, quantitative, or use mixed methods, can be national, regional, or local in scope, and can focus on any topic related to the workforce and care for people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Two types of Pilot Awards are available in this cycle:
- Mini-Awards (previously called Research Fellowships), which provide up to $5,000 to support data acquisition (i.e., purchasing a dataset, traveling to conduct interviews for qualitative research), traveling to collaborate with a research mentor, attending a workshop, purchasing analytical software, or similar activities.
- Full Awards, which provide up to $25,000 total costs; Applicants for the Full Awards are encouraged to apply for less than $25,000 if appropriate for their Aims.
For Full Awards, priority will be given to projects that focus on the direct care workforce and are designed to help the applicant collect the data and research skills needed to submit a strong NIH K-award or R-award application. For Mini-Awards, priority will be given to activities that advance the applicant’s research and provide support that is otherwise unavailable to the applicant. We are particularly interested in supporting promising early-stage scholars.
We anticipate supporting 2-3 Full Awards of up to $25,000 each and 2-3 Mini-Awards of up to $5,000 each.
Deadline for applications: February 28, 2025, 11:59pm Pacific time
Informational webinar can be found here.
For more information, read the full Request for Applications. (updated January 24, 2025)
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We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Pilot Awards. Recipients were selected from an impressive group of competitive applications.
2025 AWARD Network Pilot Award Recipients:
Yiqing Qian, PhD, MPH, Johns Hopkin University
“Towards Better Teamwork Between Paid and Family Care in the Community: Paid Care Experiences and Psychosocial Well-being of Family Caregivers of Older Adults with Dementia”
The growing aging U.S. population has heightened the urgency of strengthening teamwork between families and direct care workers (DCWs) in dementia care. Grounded in the theories of Caregiver Stress Process, Convoys of Care, and Relational Coordination, our objective is to examine how family caregivers’ coordination with DCWs and their perspectives on paid care influence their psychosocial well-being (e.g., loneliness, depression) and the receipt of paid care among community-dwelling older adults living with dementia.
Reed WR Bratches, PhD, MPH, MALS, University of Alabama at Birmingham
“Care-Resistant Behaviors and Training Preparedness in the Dementia Care Workforce: Analysis of the National Dementia Workforce Study”
This project will use the National Dementia Workforce Study to identify factors associated with managing care-resistant behaviors among the dementia care workforce, and will identify where training and preparedness may be improved with targeted intervention. This study will support the development of interventions for high-need members of the dementia workforce.
2025 AWARD Network Pilot Mini Award Recipient:
Yeonjung Jane Lee, PhD, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
“Challenges, motivation, and resilience in the dementia workforce: A mixed methods study of immigrant direct care workers”
Direct dementia care workers who are immigrants are valuable as they can meet the demands of a diversifying aging population. However, despite the strengths and benefits of immigrant direct care workers caring for people living with dementia, they are often situated in challenging work situations. The objective of the proposed research is to investigate the challenges, strengths, and recommendations for the dementia care workforce, focusing on the immigrant direct care worker experience through a mixed-methods approach.
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We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024 Pilot Awards. Recipients were selected from an impressive group of competitive applications.
2024 AWARD Network Pilot Award Recipients:
Emerald Jenkins, PhD, DNP, RN, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing
“Use of the Health Equity Framework to Characterize Multi-Level Factors Correlated with Pain and the Receipt of the Direct Care Workforce in Older Adults with Dementia”
Despite the importance of the direct care workforce in pain management, little is known about people of color, and marginalized, vulnerable persons living with dementia (PLWD) with pain and their care arrangements and costs of care. For the population of PLWD and pain, using National Health and Aging Trends Study data our objectives are to: (1) characterize multi-level factors correlated with pain, and (2) identify predictors of direct care workforce use for caregivers; using several databases we will also conduct a systematic review to (3) determine efficacious pain interventions.
Katherine Miller, PhD, and Karen Shen, PhD, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
“State Policy Responses to COVID-19 and Workforce Dynamics: Examining Industry Exit Trends for Direct Care Workers and Firms”
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated direct care staffing challenges in many industries and threatened the financial viability of many long-term care providers. Our objective is to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both long-term care worker turnover and closures of home health and home care agencies, and whether state policies, such as reimbursement rate increases and targeted wage supports, mediated these impacts.