Professors Receive Grant from National Institute on Aging.
It seems like a paradox: caregivers who perform more activities for their care recipient are more stressed, which should lead to poorer health outcomes.
Instead, they have lower rates of mortality and functional decline.
To develop measures that better reflect the up- and downsides of caregiving, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) has awarded Lisa Fredman, a professor of epidemiology, an Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21).
Conventional measures count the number of activities a caregiver helps with, but not whether they are emotionally or physically difficult for them. This assumes more activities means more stress—and misses part of the picture.
“There probably are a variety of aspects of caregiving that are health-inducing,” says Fredman, including feeling needed and appreciated, and being more physically and cognitively active.
Fredman serves as principal investigator of the study, with Kate Applebaum, a former assistant professor of epidemiology, serving as multiple principal investigator. Lee Strunin, professor of community health sciences, is a co-investigator.
The researchers will interview older caregivers in the Boston metropolitan area, allowing them to explain in their own words what tasks are difficult and why. The researchers will then work with an expert panel to design a weighting scheme. The new measures will be validated against other measures of stress and compared to conventional measures of caregiving intensity on associations with mortality and functional decline.
The National Institute on Aging is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH awards R21 research grants for exploratory studies that break new ground or extend previous discoveries toward new directions or applications, as well as for high risk/high reward studies that may lead to a breakthrough in a particular area or approach.