Courtney Van Houtven PhD

Courtney Van Houtven

Core Faculty

Courtney Van Houtven, PhD

Degree

PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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.  She is also a Research Scientist in Health Services Research and Development in Primary Care at the Durham Veteran’s Administration. Dr. Van Houtven’s aging and economics research interests encompass long-term care financing, intra-household decision-making, informal care, and end-of-life care. 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.

In an R-01 from The National Institutes of Nursing Research, NIH, Dr. Van Houtven examined the relationship between family structure, informal caregiving, and long-term care insurance (2011-2014). She recently completed an RCT testing the effectiveness of a skills training program for family caregivers of Veteran patients with functional and/or cognitive limitations who were referred to community-based long-term care, or HI-FIVES (VA HSR&D IIR 11-345). She is co-PI on the newly awarded QUERI Program Project, “Optimizing Function and Independence”, leading implementation of HI-FIVES at 8 sites nationally. She directs the VA-Cares Evaluation Center in the Durham COIN, which recently completed a national evaluation of the VA’s Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers (PCAFC), a program that supports family members who care for injured post-9/11 Veterans. She is a co-investigator on the NIA/NIH CARE IDEAS R01 study examining outcomes among care partners and persons with cognitive impairment and dementia (Vince Mor, PI) and on an R01 called "Informal Caregiver Burden in Advanced Cancer: Economic and Health Outcomes" (Siminoff and Matsuyama, Co-PIs).


Areas of expertise: Health Services Research and Health Economics

Bélanger E, Jutkowitz E, Shewmaker P, Van Houtven CH, Burke JR, Plassman BL, et al. Prevalence and incidence of depressive symptoms and diagnosis of depression as associated with elevated amyloid among Medicare beneficiaries with cognitive impairment. J Affect Disord. 2023 Aug 1;334:293–6.

Shepherd-Banigan M, Shapiro A, Stechuchak KM, Sheahan KL, Ackland PE, Smith VA, et al. Exploring the importance of predisposing, enabling, and need factors for promoting Veteran engagement in mental health therapy for post-traumatic stress: a multiple methods study. Bmc Psychiatry. 2023 May 27;23(1):372.

Kaufman BG, Jones KA, Greiner MA, Giri A, Stewart L, He A, et al. Health Care Use and Spending Among Need-Based Subgroups of Medicare Beneficiaries With Full Medicaid Benefits. Jama Health Forum. 2023 May 5;4(5):e230973.