PHI’s Kezia Scales Appointed to the Administration for Community Living’s RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council

Kezia Scales, PhD (she/her), Vice President of Research & Evaluation

PHI’s Kezia Scales, PhD, vice president of research & evaluation, was recently appointed to the Administration for Community Living’s (ACL) RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council.

The advisory council was established by the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act in 2018. In its first term, from 2019-2022, the advisory council developed the 2022 National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, which was delivered to Congress in September 2022 and included nearly 350 federal actions and more than 150 state and local actions to strengthen supports for family caregivers.

Over the next three years, Scales and the other advisory council members will build upon this historic strategy. Their remit is to gather and review information about the real-life situations of caregivers and the promising practices to help support them and the people they care for. The council will advise ACL and its partners across the federal government on family caregiving issues, and promote and track implementation of the 2022 National Strategy. In addition, they will create the first update to the strategy, which will be delivered late next year.

The new advisory council members represent the diversity of family caregivers, people who receive support, and a range of other constituencies, including direct care workers. These new members are experts in caregiving through lived experience or their professional background, and sometimes both.

As PHI’s vice president of research & evaluation, Scales leads the organization’s strategy for building the evidence base on state and national policies and workforce interventions that improve direct care jobs, elevate this essential workforce, and strengthen care processes and outcomes. For nearly 15 years, Scales has been studying and advocating for person-centered, high-quality long-term care with a focus on direct care workers. She has been published in a range of academic journals and regularly disseminates research findings, policy recommendations, and best practices to diverse audiences through conferences, webinars, invited testimony, media outlets, and more.

Scales currently serves on the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Integrating the Health and Care Workforce, co-leads the Advancing Workforce Analysis and Research for Dementia (AWARD) Network, co-chairs the Workforce Committee of the national Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition, and is a member of the American Society on Aging and the Gerontological Society of America, among other roles.

The advisory council’s members also include multiple caregivers of older adults and people with disabilities; a person with a disability who receives caregiver support; a veteran; an employer; a direct service provider who works closely with people with disabilities; state and local officials; a representative of a health care accrediting organization; and professionals in the fields of health care, social services, and long-term services and supports.

While ACL has made significant progress in implementing the national strategy since it was delivered last fall, the Family Caregiving Advisory Council will play a critical role in ensuring that momentum continues and historic transformation is accomplished for this country’s family caregivers.