ConnectShareCare was very helpful in moral support, good advice, and connecting me with people going through similar things.
Jay, caregiver and ConnectShareCare volunteer mentorCoping with illness, caregiving, or loss can be one of life’s most isolating experiences—but it doesn’t have to be. Dartmouth Health’s ConnectShareCare, a free online platform, is providing a lifeline to hundreds of individuals facing these challenges by offering connection, community, and compassion.
Launched in May 2021, the platform has grown to more than 400 members, recently expanded the discussion groups for people experiencing long COVID and is planning more groups for managing long-term illnesses.
Designed by a team of care partners, patients, healthcare providers, and researchers from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, ConnectShareCare supports caregivers, individuals with serious or long-term illnesses, and those grieving the loss of loved ones by offering online discussion boards, personal story sharing, crisis resources, and in-person event listings.
“ConnectShareCare is not about providing medical advice and treatment recommendations,” said Sandra L. Knowlton-Soho, RN, program manager of ConnectShareCare in the Dartmouth Health Office of Care Experience. “It is about people with lived experience talking to each other about their own frustrations or what has—or has not—worked for them. It’s about people being able to say, ‘I'm so glad to have found a group of people that make me feel like I'm not so alone.’”
Studies show that caregiving often results in chronic stress and can compromise a caregiver’s mental and physical health, leading to physical and psychological strain, as well as depression. Grief, too, can have a debilitating impact on health. But research also shows that online support groups, like those on ConnectShareCare, can help.
Jay, a longtime partner and caregiver to his late soulmate Meredith, turned to ConnectShareCare after she passed from complications of treatment for brain cancer. He credits the platform’s “Active Caring” and “Grief and Loss” support communities with helping him find hope and healing.
“I'd never done anything like that before, but ConnectShareCare was very helpful in moral support, good advice, and connecting me with people going through similar things,” Jay said. “I've now made a lot of friends, friends who have gone through similar things.”
Jay is now a volunteer mentor on the platform, reviewing the discussion board’s emails daily and offering support to others navigating similar paths, “because I know how valuable showing understanding to someone who is struggling can be, whether because of illness or loss.”
The platform is part of the Promise Partnership Coproduction Learning Health System—a strategic partnership between The Dartmouth Institute and the Office of Care Experience in the Value Institute at Dartmouth Health.
To join or learn more about ConnectShareCare, visit connectsharecare.org.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and the state’s largest private employer, serves patients across northern New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,000 providers in almost every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH, as well as across its wide network of hospitals, clinics and care facilities. DHMC is consistently named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, one of only 57 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the nation, and the only such center in northern New England; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital and multiple locations around the region; member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire; and more than 24 clinics that provide ambulatory and specialty services across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its historical partnership with Dartmouth and the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually, and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials recognized across the globe with Geisel and the White River Junction VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT. Dartmouth Health and its more than 13,000 employees are deeply committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in our communities, and to providing each of our patients with exceptional, personal care.