Globally, it is well known that grandparents often serve their families by providing instrumental and emotional support. Grandparents may also assume the role of “surrogate parent” or raise grandchildren when the middle generation is unavailable. When grandparents assume the primary caregiving role of their grandchildren, they often experience decreases in their physical and mental health. One aspect of health and well-being that is critical to maintaining and improving optimal health in later life is self-care. Self-care focuses on personal health maintenance and includes positive lifestyle practices. Despite the self-care literature being rooted in the medical field with more than 25,000 articles on the topic, empirical research addressing grandparents’ raising grandchildren self-care practices, however, is minimal. Furthermore, although chronic disease self-management interventions are well known, until recently, no program directly targets self-care practices of grandparents. As a result, we utilized methods in community-based participatory research (CBPR), which is often used to identify and meet the needs of at-risk populations, to develop and implement The GRANDcares Project. This presentation will extend the literature on CBPR principles by describing our collaborative working relationships with local and state agencies, including two statewide Extension systems, serving grandparent caregivers. We also will address our research objectives and outcomes related to improving grandparents’ self-care. Finally, we will address the theoretical background of CBPR, the challenges and benefits of using CBPR as a recruitment and retention strategy, and suggest guidelines for using this method to support self-care practices of grandparent caregivers in both the United States and abroad.
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