From leadership research to district action: Equipping Change Agents: Applying Mixed Methods to Learn About the Outcomes of the Co-Designed Caregiver-Centered Care Champions Education Program

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Family caregivers provide most daily care for people living with chronic illness or frailty, yet they remain under-recognized in health and social care systems. To address this gap, we co-designed the Caregiver-Centered Care Champions Education Program, which equips frontline providers with the competencies needed to lead caregiver-inclusive change. Guided by the Kirkpatrick-Barr Health Workforce Education Framework, we conducted a mixed methods interpretive description evaluation of learner satisfaction, knowledge and confidence gains, and self-reported behaviour change. Sixty-seven interdisciplinary participants completed three online modules. Quantitative results from pre/post surveys (Wilcoxon signed rank tests) showed significant improvements across all competencies (p < 0.001; large effect sizes) alongside high satisfaction (means 6.56–6.96/7). Qualitative findings revealed that 94% of participants applied program content within three months, and 61% implemented five or more distinct behaviour changes (e.g., collaborative care planning, system navigation support). The analysis illuminated how learners integrated caregiver-centred principles with change leadership strategies. Time constraints and staffing shortages emerged as key barriers. Our co-designed, theory-informed approach effectively bridged individual learning and system change, demonstrating the potential to transform caregiver inclusion practices when supported by organizational policies.

Study methods

We used a mixed methods interpretive description design to evaluate the program. Interpretive description is an approach well suited to applied health disciplines because it generates insights that directly inform practice [72,73,74].

Limitations

Strengths of this study include a theory-informed design guided by the Kirkpatrick-Barr Health Workforce Education Framework, co-design with a large and diverse stakeholder group, the use of mixed methods, and high program completion rates. Because learners in this cohort had previously completed the Foundational and Advanced Caregiver-Centered Care Education, they may have had a positivity bias toward caregiver-inclusive practice. Limitations include reliance on self-reported outcomes, a modest sample size, and contextual specificity that may limit generalizability. Participants were predominantly health and social care professionals, with a smaller subset of experienced family caregivers. We did not directly measure outcomes for family caregivers receiving support; findings reflect learner perceptions and self-reports at follow-up. Attendance at optional live sessions was not systematically tracked.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Tanya L’Heureux; Jasneet Parmar; David Nicholas; Lesley Charles; Cheryl Pollard; Myles Leslie; Kimberly Shapkin; Shannon Saunders; Cindy Sim; Paige Walker; Ginger Bitzer; Safia Khalfan; Sharon Anderson. Equipping Change Agents: Applying Mixed Methods to Learn About the Outcomes of the Co-Designed Caregiver-Centered Care Champions Education Program. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2025-10-20). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22101593

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.