Caregivers Supporting the Health and Quality of Life of Aging Adults: Needs and Opportunities at the Personal, Community, and Societal Levels

Dear Colleagues,

Around the world, family members and friends provide a vital source of care and support for people as they age. Whether because of health conditions, barriers to social participation, injuries, or other reasons, older adults often experience declines in function, and these impairments can restrict their activities and participation, ultimately resulting in poor health and needs for assistance. Children and younger adults also sometimes need support and assistance with daily life, often for the same reasons as older adults: health conditions, disabilities, or injuries. Informal carers or caregivers can help their care recipients manage health conditions, receive appropriate health care, provide companionship, complete daily activities, and engage with their communities. Through these activities, caregivers improve the health and quality of life of their care recipients, and can prevent or delay institutionalization.

Caregivers’ own health and wellbeing is important to consider alongside that of their care recipients. Caregivers can gain benefits from their role, including a sense of purpose, a stronger connection with their care recipient, and potentially more opportunity to be physically active. However, caregivers may also experience emotional and physical strain because of their caregiving duties, and they may lose income or social connections if they give up work or community activities because of their caregiving responsibilities. 

The aims of this Special Issue are to describe unique health and quality of life experiences of caregivers and to share evidence about promising or proven interventions that enable informal caregivers to effectively support their care recipients while maintaining their own health and quality of life. From a public health perspective, support for caregivers could come at the individual level through training, at the community level through services and supports, or at the societal level through policy and funding changes. We consider health to be multi-dimensional, consistent with the World Health Organization’s definition and conceptualization, and therefore invite submissions that focus on physical, mental, and social health, which may also include a specific emphasis on emotional, spiritual, or another domain of health. We also consider quality of life to be a valid outcome measure, and welcome submissions that focus on global or domain-specific quality of life. Finally, we use the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health to conceptualize disability and recognize the importance of the environment—the caregiver being the most salient part of that environment for this Special Issue—in determining whether or not an individual experiences disability.

We invite papers from a broad range of perspectives, including but not limited to public health practitioners, policy and legal experts, health care providers, community-based service providers, government agencies, implementation scientists, demographers, social geographers, and health economists. We encourage submissions that use quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches. We will also consider papers that present a conceptual framework or address methodological or measurement issues related to caregiving. We welcome submissions that focus on people aging with disabilities, as well as those including people who developed a disability later in life. Papers that are purely descriptive in nature will be considered, but should provide information about a poorly studied population of caregivers or should provide new population-level estimates.

Topics may include:

• Factors associated with health and quality of life among caregivers, including among specific types of caregivers or caregivers with particular demographic characteristics or social determinants of health.
• Cultural or place-based needs of caregivers and care recipients and effective or promising strategies for adapting programs to meet these needs.
• Intervention programs that improve the health of care recipients and/or caregivers.
• Strategies for improving access to formal or informal supports and services for caregivers and care recipients that are known to increase health and/or quality of life.
• Policies that effectively support caregivers and/or care recipients.
• Strategies for increasing or maintaining the availability of informal caregivers as populations and/or social structures change.
• Electronic or mobile health services that are acceptable to caregivers and care recipients and improve their health.
• Measurement issues related to evaluating changes in caregiver and/or care recipient health or to the need for or use of formal or informal support services.

We will consider papers related to a topic not explicitly stated here. Please feel free to contact the Guest Editors for a pre-review of your abstract to determine whether it fits within the scope of this Special Issue.

Dr. Erin DeFries Bouldin
Prof. Mary Jo Pugh
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• health and quality of life among caregivers
• support for caregivers
• policies that effectively support caregivers
• aging population health