Caregiver Social Support

The VR-CARES project is an innovative, collaborative effort that invites dementia care professionals into the design process of a virtual reality platform seeking to mitigate their work-related burden and social isolation by cultivating a virtual community of support. The co-created, caregiver-specific VR platform will serve as a safe, communal space where caregivers can remotely connect with their peers, share fun experiences together, access support, learn self-care and build resilience within a supportive virtual network to enhance their social and mental health and job satisfaction. Central to VR-CARES in the principle of user-led innovation, ensuring that the technology not only serves but is informed and successfully adopted by the very individuals it intends to benefit, an important standard for empathetic and inclusive technology in healthcare.

The purpose of this study is to design Community Enhancing Resources for Childhood cAncer support (CERCA) and refine intervention procedures to target Health-related Social Needs (HRSN) in families of children with cancer. CERCA will leverage existing community resources and create partnerships that will lead to sustainable outcomes. The hypothesis is that through context-driven co-design and community-engaged research methods, the study team will develop an acceptable intervention to target unmet HRSN in families of children with cancer.