NC Caregiving Research Network

Dr. Heather Altman has more than 25+ years experience in the aging services sectors. She specializes in promoting community-based initiatives addressing service delivery, workforce development and policy and planning with particular emphasis on improving serious illness care, aging care options and caregiver resources.

Dr. Altman is the Executive Director of the Health Sciences Health Innovations Group, on the executive committee of the North Carolina Serious Illness Coalition, and the Co-Lead of the NC Caregiving Collaborative. She is the host of their on-line, news-style show “Friday Facts,” interviewing health care leaders and advocates from across North Carolina. She is also the host of a community-based radio show & podcast “Aging Well Together”. Additionally, she provides planning support to individuals and families as a Senior Living Specialist with All About Seniors, Inc.

Dr. Altman received her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health where she continues to serve as adjunct faculty.

Karen Appert is co-lead of the NC Caregiving Collaborative, which convenes organizations and individuals engaged in caregiving advocacy. Karen was caregiver for 25 years for her mother, who had MS and dementia. Inspired by her caregiving experiences, she obtained a master’s degree in gerontology and changed careers from marketing to the field of aging. In addition to co-lead of the NC Caregiving Collaborative, Karen works with the NCDHHS Division of Aging as Program Manager for the Seniors Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP).

Nathan Adam Boucher is a Research Health Scientist at the Durham VA Health System’s Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation (ADAPT) and a faculty member at Duke University across the Sanford School of Public Policy, the School of Medicine, and the School of Nursing. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Duke Center for the Study of Aging & Human Development and Core Faculty at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.

He brings extensive experience in clinical medicine as a licensed physician assistant in critical care and emergency medicine, as well as in health care administration, health professions education, hospice and palliative care quality improvement, and community-based research. His research agenda is informed by challenges and opportunities at the intersection of social care and health care. Through interdisciplinary collaborations at the VA and Duke and partnerships with community organizations, he has developed deep insight into the lived experiences and challenges of community members and family and friend care partners.

His research has been funded by the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, multiple foundations, and Duke University. Recent work includes: (1) examining care partners’ social and health needs while supporting older adults reentering the community from prison; (2) designing and testing community health worker programs for older adults; (3) characterizing concerns of care partners and people living with dementia regarding care settings and emerging technologies; (4) applying systems approaches to homelessness among Veterans; and (5) defining and realigning training and employment pathways for North Carolina direct care workers in home- and community-based services.

Connect with Nathan: nathan.boucher@duke.edu

Dr. Cassandra M. Germain received her B.A. from Hunter College- CUNY and her MS and PhD from North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of demographic, health and behavioral factors on cognition, functional independence, and well-being in older adults. Current projects include brain health education and outreach in low-resourced areas, music intervention on brain health and caregiver research.

Jenny Hobbs graduated from Wake Forest University with a BS in Health and Exercise Science and is a current MSW student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In addition to being a parent of 4 kids, 3 of whom are medically fragile, she is a former teacher, medical office administrator, and CAP/C social work case manager. As a co-founder and current Board Chair of Advocates for Medically Fragile Kids, she assists families access Medicaid services as well as and provides support and resources.

Christina Hugenschmidt, PhD, MS, LCMHC is the Rebecca E. Shaw Professor and Director of the Memory Counseling Program and Associate Professor of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine in the Sticht Center on Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention. She is a neuroscientist committed to research that maintains dignity and purpose for older adults across the range of physical and cognitive function they experience. She is the principal investigator or co-investigator on NIH-funded and foundation grants investigating the effects of aging on the brain and body, caregiving stress, and the potential of lifestyle interventions to support healthy brain and body function in caregivers and older adults with or at risk for dementia. In addition to research, she has been leading caregiver support groups since 2012 and served on the board of the WNC Alzheimer’s Association for three years. Her work on arts and aging with her close collaborator and 2019 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow Christina Soriano, MFA, MBA, has led to community collaborations to promote access to the arts and unique outreach opportunities. She co-leads the Bioimaging Core of the Wake Forest Claude D. Pepper Older Adults Independence Center and is a member of the Wake Forest Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Dr. Brystana Kaufman is a health services researcher focused on improving the value of care for older adults with complex care needs, such as serious illness or developmental disability. She brings expertise in causal inference as well as Medicaid and Medicare value-based payment models to inform evidence-based program design. Her work prioritizes the evaluation of health disparities for underserved communities and seeks to inform whole-person models of care that integrate traditional clinical services with behavioral health, socioeconomic and social supports to address older adults’ diverse needs and reflect their preferences for care. She worked with the CMS Innovation Center as a 2022-2023 Health and Aging Policy fellow, and she is core faculty with the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy.

Dr. Kent is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Research in Health Policy and Management at the UNC–Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, a Health Services Research Fellow at the Cecil G. Sheps Center, and a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

Dr. Kent’s work centers on developing and implementing supportive care interventions for people with serious illness and conducting research that informs policies to strengthen support for family caregivers across the lifecourse. Her mission is to advance evidence-based strategies that improve caregiver well-being and integrate caregiver support into diverse health care contexts. She leads multiple transdisciplinary collaborations with researchers, clinicians, community partners, and students at UNC and nationally. Prior to joining UNC, she served as a Program at the National Cancer Institute and helped build a research resource portfolio in caregiving, including funding announcements, a national report on cancer caregiving, and survey items on caregiving in the Health Information and National Trends Survey.

Currently, she is adapting, testing, and implementing enCompass, a supportive care coaching intervention for cancer caregivers within cancer care delivery systems. She also partners with state and national organizations to advance recommendations from the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. She has served as the APOS Caregiver Research Special Interest Group Chair in the past and is invested in growing the society’s work to help support the psychosocial needs of cancer caregivers. She is also Co-Chairing the National Biennial Conference on Caregiving Research.

Dr. George Kueppers is a Senior Research Manager at the National Alliance for Caregiving. Dr. Kueppers is a trained health communication scientist whose research has spanned healthcare-related phenomena from mental health help-seeking behavior to preventative and palliative cancer care to healthcare policy advocacy and beyond. Dr. Kueppers received a Masters and PhD in Health Communication at George Mason University, where he also taught communication courses and served as a graduate research assistant for a grant-funded public health research project through the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). After finishing his PhD, Dr. Kueppers completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he was assigned to various research projects within the Health Communication and Informatics and Health Behaviors Research Branches, including studying communication among healthcare providers, cancer survivors, and cancer caregivers, as well as the unique health information needs of cancer survivors and cancer caregivers. Broadly, Dr. Kueppers is passionate about conducting ethical and effective public health research to improve health and well-being outcomes for people navigating complex health issues within healthcare systems, with particular interest in understanding social determinants of health and addressing health disparities. Dr. Kueppers is currently serving as Project Director for the CARE Network – the Goal 5 component of the National Caregiving Support Collaborative – in addition to supporting other research activities at the National Alliance for Caregiving including the Caregiving in the U.S. study and the Research Collaborative initiative.

Dr. Sandi Lane is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Southern Gerontological Society and a licensed nursing home administrator. Her operational experience spans acute care, long-term care, and ancillary services. She serves as Past Chair of the Post-Acute Care Faculty Forum within AUPHA, Secretary of the Southern Gerontological Society, and as an academic and program reviewer for the National Association of Long-Term Care Administrator Boards.

Dr. Lane has published in Health Care Management Review, The Gerontologist, Natural Hazards, International Journal of Disaster and Risk Reduction, Journal of Applied Gerontology, and Science of the Total Environment. Her research interests focus on the impact of policy, health system structure, management processes, and financing on quality of care for older adults.

Recent research includes collaboration with the North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association to assess the impact of a recruitment and training program for certified nursing assistants on nursing home quality metrics. Dr. Lane is also a key partner in the WECARE (Workforce Engagement with Care Workers to Assist, Recognize, and Educate) collective impact project, funded by Cares at the UNC–Chapel Hill School of Social Work in partnership with North Carolina Money Follows the Person (August 1, 2022–July 1, 2026).

Elizabeth (Betsy) Olson is Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her PhD in Geography from the University of Colorado and previously held positions at the University of Lancaster, England, and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her writing and teaching focuses on ethics and practices of care and inequality across diverse contexts, themes, and geographic regions. Her research has been funded by NSF, ESRC/EHRC (UK), PCORI, and the European Union. She has published widely in geography and interdisciplinary journals, and she has co-edited and co-authored five books on gender, religion, and development inequality. Over the past ten years, she has focused much of her research energy toward building interdisciplinary teams that produce evidence for supporting young people who are caregivers and using that evidence in partnership with policy makers to create impactful changes in schools and health care.
She has been recognized by the American Association of Geographers for her contributions to diversity (2024) and the Carolina Women’s Leadership Council for junior faculty mentoring (2022). As the inaugural recipient of the UNC William and Sara McCoy Performing Arts Leadership Award (2024), she collaborates with artists to produce new ways to understand and share the embodied intimacies of difference. Alongside her partners at Culture Mill, a local arts collective, she brings together community groups and students to create place-based artistic interventions and disruptions to better tell the history of UNC’s and Chapel Hill’s racialized landscapes.

Dr. Megan Shepherd-Banigan is Research Scientist in the Health Services Research and Development Service (HSR&D) ADAPT Center of Excellence at the Durham Veteran’s Administration (VA). She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. She is also a Dr. Shepherd-Banigan holds a doctorate in Health Services Research from the University of Washington, an MPH from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and completed postdoctoral training at the Durham VA ADAPT. Dr. Shepherd-Banigan is a health services researcher who applies mixed methods and rigorous causal designs to observational data, including electronic medical records, to evaluate the effectiveness of health system programs and policies on health and social outcomes. Her research interests center on improving access to and quality of health care services for medically vulnerable populations, including individuals with mental illness, women Veterans, older adults with cognitive impairment, and family caregivers. She is the Director of the VA CARES—the evaluation center for the VA Caregiver Support Program and has extensive research background in aging and long-term care.

Stephanie S. Sperry is a PhD student minoring in Health Politics and Policy. Stephanie completed a Master of Public Health in Health Policy at UNC and received a Bachelor of Arts in Public Health Policy from the University of California, Irvine. Prior to coming to UNC, Stephanie worked as a Public Health Investigator for the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health. Her research interests focus on the health outcomes of informal caregivers, particularly as it relates to new parents’ access to paid family leave policies. As a trained birth doula, she has also been exploring the value of birth doulas in public health and their potential to improve birth outcomes.

Patrick Yao Tang, MPH, is a project director at the North Carolina Institute of Medicine and leads projects on the nursing workforce, perinatal health, and caregiving. He has experience managing local, national, and international research projects on mutual and peer support interventions for health and well-being. Patrick earned his Master of Public Health in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Bachelor of Arts in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.

Dr. Courtney Van Houtven is a Professor in The Department of Population Health Science, Duke University School of Medicine and Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. Dr. Van Houtven’s aging and economics research interests encompass long-term care financing, intra-household decision-making, unpaid family and friend care, and home- and community-based services. She examines how family caregiving affects health care utilization, expenditures, health and work outcomes of care recipients and caregivers. She is also interested in understanding how best to support family caregivers to optimize caregiver and care recipient outcomes. She leads a mixed methods R01 study as PI from the National Institute on Aging that will assess the value of “home time” for persons living with dementia and their caregivers (RF1 AG072364). She also directs CASCADE: Center for Advancing the Science of Complex Care: Aging, Disability, and Equity, a grant-funded center within DPHS.

Dr. Tyreasa Washington holds appointments at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry and at Cambridge Health Alliance. She is also the President and CEO of Agape Therapeutic Services, PLLC and is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar in the child welfare field. She is the founding director of the African American Families and Kinship Care Lab and a former professor and current affiliate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Previously, she served as the Child Welfare Program Area Director and Distinguished Senior Scholar for Child Welfare at Child Trends. Dr. Washington is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with direct practice and management experience in both child welfare and mental health settings.

Dr. Washington has served as principal investigator on several National Institutes of Health–funded studies, including two supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Her research focuses on understanding how family and community shape the academic, social, and behavioral outcomes of Black children in kinship care, as well as the stress and health outcomes, including Alzheimer’s disease, of Black caregivers. She has co-authored numerous publications and reports and has presented her research at universities and organizations across the United States and internationally, including in Ghana, South Africa, and Europe. Dr. Washington has also been invited to serve as a panelist on Capitol Hill to share her expertise on child welfare and kinship care. Her research has informed state-level policy efforts, including the approval of kinship care focused legislation in Maryland, and her work has been featured in prestigious media outlets, including The Guardian.

Jenny Womack has been engaged with caregiving conversations both personally and professionally for more than 35 years. She currently serves as Professor and Director of the program in Occupational Therapy at Appalachian State University, and is active in service to the Appalachian Institute for Health and Wellness. Her dissertation work and subsequent research focus on interactions between health services and caregiving, highlighting the importance of foregrounding caregiving as relational, and care partners as equal agents in decisions affecting their situations. Jenny’s work has primarily been with older care partners and those who provide care in the context of serious and/or chronic illness and disability. She served for 10 years as a consultant to the Orange County (NC) Department on Aging and during that time was project coordinator for a grant-funded program establishing dementia caregiving services within the organization. She is currently engaged in service to the High Country Area Agency on Aging with a project focused on collaborating with care partners to determine home modifications for falls prevention, and her emerging research explores heightened caregiving challenges during climate disasters.

Dr. Tess Thompson is an assistant professor at the UNC School of Social Work and a member of Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. She studies the social context of cancer prevention and control, including the role of cancer caregiving, the importance of social support, and the effects of unmet social needs (e.g., transportation, food) on outcomes for patients and caregivers. She is the principal investigator of an R37 MERIT Award from NCI known as the Health Outcomes and Pairs’ Experiences (HOPE) Study. The HOPE Study is currently enrolling pairs of patients with breast or gynecologic cancers and their informal caregivers to learn more about how their social context affects the physical and mental health. Her work has been published in academic journals including Health Psychology, Social Science & Medicine, Health Education and Behavior, and Journal of the Society for Social Work & Research. She is currently on the editorial boards of Social Science & Medicine and Journal of Psychosocial Oncology.

Divya Cupitt serves as Section Chief of Planning, Evaluation, and Systems Support within the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Aging, where she leads statewide strategic planning efforts to strengthen systems of support for older adults. Her work includes overseeing the development and implementation of North Carolina’s State Aging Plan and Multisector Plan for Aging (All Ages, All Stages NC), with a focus on building coordinated, cross-sector infrastructure that supports well-being across the lifespan.

With a background that bridges direct, bedside care experience and population health planning, Divya brings a systems-level perspective shaped by work across the lifespan, from children and families to older adults. She is deeply committed to integrating community-informed and data-driven approaches, emphasizing the importance of aligned systems that support health, independence, and quality of life at every stage.

In her current role, she also oversees statewide aging demographic and programmatic data initiatives, supports cross-agency and cross-sector partnerships, and helps advance efforts that reframe aging as a lifelong process that intersects with every individual, system, and community. Through this work, she aims to ensure that all North Carolinians, regardless of age, geography, or identity, can access the supports they need to thrive.

Divya earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Medical Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Public Health: Leadership in Practice from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her early career included roles as a Senior Center Program Coordinator with Resources for Seniors and as a Healthy Aging NC Falls Prevention Project Specialist with the NC Center for Health and Wellness, experiences that grounded her in community-based aging work prior to transitioning to the NC State Unit on Aging. Earlier in her career, she also worked as a nursing assistant supporting older adults, including individuals living with dementia, which shaped her initial interest in healthcare and caregiving systems.

She is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion and to fostering collaboration across sectors to build a more responsive and resilient infrastructure for North Carolina’s aging population. She currently serves on the American Society on Aging’s DEI Upstanders Advisory Board and Public Policy Committee, as well as the Center for Health Care Strategies Equity Changemakers initiative.