Boucher Awarded VA Grant to Support Caregivers of Rural Veterans

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Nathan Boucher, Associate Research Professor with Sanford and Associate Professor in the Schools of Nursing and Medicine, has been awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The four-year award will fund a large-scale community-based randomized trial to test an innovative model of caregiver support for Veterans living with serious illness in rural North Carolina and Virginia.

The project, known as PATH (Partnering for Access To Helpful resources), builds on Boucher’s pilot work using trained community health workers to support family members and friends who provide daily care for older Veterans with serious illnesses. Caregivers often face unmet social and practical needs, from transportation and utilities to food and housing, that directly affect their well-being and ability to care for their loved ones. Health systems are not always prepared to address these challenges, but Boucher’s research suggests that Community Health Workers (CHWs) may help fill this gap.

The PATH study will train eight CHWs and enroll 480 Veteran–caregiver pairs, randomly assigning them to either the intervention or a control group. The research will test whether this approach can reduce caregiver burden, improve Veterans’ well-being, and increase satisfaction with VA care. In addition to evaluating outcomes, the study will explore participants’ experiences with CHWs and assess the program’s scalability through a VA budget impact analysis.

“Our pilot work showed us that caregivers deeply value having someone to help them navigate the maze of services and supports,” said Boucher. “This new award gives us the opportunity to rigorously test that model in rural communities where support is often hardest to access. Our goal is to improve the quality of life for Veterans and ease the burden on the people who care for them every day.”

Boucher’s earlier pilot study, conducted with nine CHW-trained “navigators”, demonstrated both feasibility and promise. Caregivers reported high satisfaction, strong bonds with navigators, and reduced burden scores over the course of the 12-week intervention. Navigators connected caregivers to needed supports roughly 80 percent of the time, despite providing all assistance remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. These results laid the groundwork for the larger trial now funded through the VA.

PATH also aligns closely with federal VA priorities to enhance caregiver support and advance rural health care delivery. If effective, the program could provide a model for integrating CHWs into VA care nationwide—170 medical centers and 1,193 outpatient sites serving approximately 9.1 million Veterans each year.

Manoj Mohanan, Interim Dean of Sanford, congratulated Boucher on the award. “Nathan’s work exemplifies the Sanford mission of using research to improve lives and inform policy. His commitment to supporting Veterans and their families is inspiring, and this award is a recognition of both his innovative thinking and the real-world impact of his scholarship.”

Boucher’s research is supported through the Durham VA Health System’s Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation (ADAPT).