Presenter(s): Janae Houston—General Science
Faculty Mentor(s): Josh Snodgrass
Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation
Within the middle-income countries the older adult demographic increasing . Addressing the health of this population is a public health priority, given that older adults in middle income nations represent a significant portion of the world’s population . There is a large burden on caregivers in middle-income countries, so there needs to be further exploration of the relationship between caregiving and poor health . We evaluated female caregivers between the age of 18 and 114 (N = 15,975) responsible for
children or older adults in Ghana, South Africa, Mexico, Russia, and India . We tested the following hypotheses: 1) Caregiving will be associated with overall poorer health in all five countries; 2) difficulties associated with caregiving will be affiliated with overall worse self-reported health due
to less sustainable income, living in rural areas, and not being married . We found that between 4 .0 and 14 .3 percent of the people in each country are caregivers . . In most countries caregiving was associated with poor health, except Mexico (where caregiving was not associated with health) and Russia (where caregiving was positively associated with health; t’s = -1 .74 to 1 .90, p’s = .03 to .26) . Reported difficulties associated with caregiving were associated with poor health in caregivers in Ghana, India, and Russia (Î2’s = .09 to .27, p’s = < .001 to .45) . It was shown that having less wealth was a significant factor associated with poor health in caregivers across all nations except Ghana (Î2’s = -0 .26 to -0 .06, p’s = .01 to .03) . Understanding the relationship between caregiver difficulties and health across nations can improve the outcomes for this population globally .