An ad hoc committee will provide input into the design of an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) systematic review of evidence on effective care-related interventions for people with dementia and their caregivers. The AHRQ systematic review will examine care interventions relevant to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (including Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and vascular cognitive impairment/dementia), and it will consider outcomes such as health outcomes, quality of life and experiences of the people with dementia and their caregivers, and utilization of services. It will also consider how the effectiveness of particular care interventions may differ as a function of the characteristics of people with dementia and their caregivers (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, dementia severity, family/household characteristics, and training). The goal is to inform decision making about which care/nonpharmacologic interventions are ready for dissemination and implementation on a broad scale.
Preliminary key questions and a preliminary study design will be jointly developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), AHRQ, and the evidence-based practice center (EPC) that AHRQ will contract with to conduct the systematic review. Responding to this, the ad hoc committee will provide advisory input to NIH, AHRQ, and the EPC in the form of a short letter report that describes potential changes and considerations for the key questions and study design that would result in the most informative and timely evidence review on this topic. Prior to implementation of the review protocol, the committee will convene with NIH, AHRQ, and the EPC for a briefing and discussion of the draft review protocol.