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What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries

In Europe, informal caregiving is frequent and is expected to grow. Caregiving has an impact on caregivers’ health, but its effect may vary according to the policies of support that are available to caregivers. The aim of this study was to assess the association between the policies of support to ca...

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Autores principales: Calvó-Perxas, Laia, Vilalta-Franch, Joan, Litwin, Howard, Turró-Garriga, Oriol, Mira, Pedro, Garre-Olmo, Josep
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5843287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29518147
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194232
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author Calvó-Perxas, Laia
Vilalta-Franch, Joan
Litwin, Howard
Turró-Garriga, Oriol
Mira, Pedro
Garre-Olmo, Josep
author_facet Calvó-Perxas, Laia
Vilalta-Franch, Joan
Litwin, Howard
Turró-Garriga, Oriol
Mira, Pedro
Garre-Olmo, Josep
author_sort Calvó-Perxas, Laia
collection PubMed
description In Europe, informal caregiving is frequent and is expected to grow. Caregiving has an impact on caregivers’ health, but its effect may vary according to the policies of support that are available to caregivers. The aim of this study was to assess the association between the policies of support to caregivers available in 12 European countries and the health of caregivers, considering separately the policies based on financial help and those based on training and other non- financial services. We used data from 13,507 caregivers from 12 European countries from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to build a path model. Poor health among caregivers was associated with living in a family-based care country (β = 0.50; 95% CI = 0.42–0.59), and with an increased extent of caregiving (β = 0.18; 95% CI = 0.15–0.22). Non-financial support measures seem to have a larger protective impact (β = –0.33; 95% CI = –0.38 - –0.28) on the health of caregivers than do financial support measures (β = 0.03; 95% CI = 0.01–0.04), regardless of the gender of the caregiver. According to our results, the currently available policies of support associated with better health among caregivers are those that: 1) provide them with some free time, 2) help them to deal emotionally with caregiving, and 3) give them skills to both improve the care situation and to deal with it better.
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spelling pubmed-58432872018-03-23 What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries Calvó-Perxas, Laia Vilalta-Franch, Joan Litwin, Howard Turró-Garriga, Oriol Mira, Pedro Garre-Olmo, Josep PLoS One Research Article In Europe, informal caregiving is frequent and is expected to grow. Caregiving has an impact on caregivers’ health, but its effect may vary according to the policies of support that are available to caregivers. The aim of this study was to assess the association between the policies of support to caregivers available in 12 European countries and the health of caregivers, considering separately the policies based on financial help and those based on training and other non- financial services. We used data from 13,507 caregivers from 12 European countries from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to build a path model. Poor health among caregivers was associated with living in a family-based care country (β = 0.50; 95% CI = 0.42–0.59), and with an increased extent of caregiving (β = 0.18; 95% CI = 0.15–0.22). Non-financial support measures seem to have a larger protective impact (β = –0.33; 95% CI = –0.38 - –0.28) on the health of caregivers than do financial support measures (β = 0.03; 95% CI = 0.01–0.04), regardless of the gender of the caregiver. According to our results, the currently available policies of support associated with better health among caregivers are those that: 1) provide them with some free time, 2) help them to deal emotionally with caregiving, and 3) give them skills to both improve the care situation and to deal with it better. Public Library of Science 2018-03-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5843287/ /pubmed/29518147 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194232 Text en © 2018 Calvó-Perxas et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Calvó-Perxas, Laia
Vilalta-Franch, Joan
Litwin, Howard
Turró-Garriga, Oriol
Mira, Pedro
Garre-Olmo, Josep
What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries
title What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries
title_full What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries
title_fullStr What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries
title_full_unstemmed What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries
title_short What seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? A cross-sectional study in 12 European countries
title_sort what seems to matter in public policy and the health of informal caregivers? a cross-sectional study in 12 european countries
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5843287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29518147
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194232
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