# Caregiving While Black-LIVE: Empowering Black Dementia Caregivers to Navigate Care

> **NIH NIH R21** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2023 · $433,523

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
In the best of times, Black caregivers are under duress. Black Americans have more than twice the prevalence
of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias than Whites, thus increasing the number of Black family members
providing care for persons living with dementia disorders like Alzheimer’s disease (PLWD). For Black dementia
caregivers, the overlay of health disparities and systemic discrimination adds substantially to the taxing
challenges of caregiving and contributes to heightened adverse outcomes for these caregivers and PLWD. Black
Americans are disproportionately burdened by the cultural and practical reality of Black caregiving in America.
This disadvantaged group faces unique, long-established stressors and vulnerabilities that inform their
experiences and affect their well-being. Black caregivers have greater care responsibilities which contribute to
greater risks for negative health effects than for white caregivers. For this proposal, we are seeking to develop
a broadly accessible, synchronous/asynchronous course for Black family caregivers who provide care for PLWD,
Caregiving while Black-LIVE ((Learning In Vital Engagement). This course seeks to equip and empower Black
dementia caregivers with the knowledge, skills, and sense of mastery they need to address and cope effectively
within their role broadly, not just in the context of the pandemic. We seek to promote caregiving self-efficacy in
Black caregivers while acknowledging the social and cultural realities of this historically minoritized racial and
ethnic group. We propose the following aims: Aim 1. Using an iterative, user-centered design approach,
reconfigure the Caregiving while Black asynchronous program into a manualized and substantially more
interactive online synchronous (facilitator-guided, face-to-face) and asynchronous (self-paced) interactive
psychoeducation course, Caregiving while Black-LIVE. Aim 2. Assess the feasibility, usability, acceptability, and
preliminary efficacy of the Caregiving while Black-LIVE course, employing a mixed-methods pre-post no control
design to gather formative and evaluative data from four cohorts (n=10 each) of Black caregivers. We will employ
established instruments to gather baseline and immediate post-course data on caregiving mastery, health
literacy, and emotional well-being (i.e., stress, anxiety, and burden). Exploratory Aim. Determine sustained
effects in engaging in Caregiving while Black-LIVE by collecting data 3 months after course completion. It is our
long-term goal for this course to enhance caregiver mastery, promote solution-focused coping and produce
positive outcomes in Black caregivers. This project moves beyond existing psychoeducational programs and
interventions that merely provide dementia-related or crisis management education to family caregivers by
keeping the issues of equity at the forefront of caregiver education. This project is the next step in establishing
a scalable and effective...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10721926
- **Project number:** 1R21AG083366-01
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Carolyn Kay Clevenger
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $433,523
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2023-09-05 → 2025-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10721926

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10721926, Caregiving While Black-LIVE: Empowering Black Dementia Caregivers to Navigate Care (1R21AG083366-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10721926. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*