Compounding strain: The impact of caregiver strain on health outcomes in older adults with new cancer diagnoses.

Introduction: We sought to examine the association between pre-existing caregiving strain levels and care recipient health outcomes following a new cancer diagnosis.

Materials And Methods: We used the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) linked with the National Study of Caregiving (NSOC) and Medicare claims to identify older adults receiving family caregiving within one year before an index cancer diagnosis. Caregiving strain was determined using NSOC items of self-reported emotional, physical, and financial difficulties measured before the cancer diagnosis.

Paying for home care out-of-pocket is common and costly across the income spectrum among older adults.

Many older adults with personal care needs rely on paid caregivers to remain in the community ("home care"). Those without Medicaid or private long-term-care insurance must pay out-of-pocket for care. We used the Health and Retirement Study to identify the prevalence and financial burden of paying for home care out-of-pocket in 2002-2018, by income and dementia status.

Mortality and Function After Hip Fracture or Pneumonia in People With and Without Dementia.

Background: The extent to which disruptive surgical or medical events impact mortality and function is critical for anticipatory planning and informing goal-aligned care.

Methods: Using Health and Retirement Study data (2008-2018), we employed propensity score matching to compare the impact of hospitalization for hip fracture (a surgical event) or pneumonia (a medical event) among people with dementia to two groups: (1) people with dementia who did not experience these events; and (2) people without dementia who experienced an event. Dementia status was determined using validated cognitive assessments (Hurd method); hip fracture and pneumonia were identified from Medicare claims.

'You want to shield your kids': Patients' and their adult-children's serious illness conversations.

Context: Timely and transparent serious illness conversations (SIC) between family caregivers and patients facilitate high-quality end-of-life care and patients' and family caregivers' mental wellbeing, but frequently do not occur, happen too late, or are incomplete. While social relations and roles shape communication, few studies explore their influence on patient-caregiver SICs.

Objectives: Investigate how the parent-child relation and roles shape SICs between cancer patients and their adult-child caregivers (ACC), the largest caregiver population.