Grant: Project Grant - PA: Patient-Oriented Research: Early-Career Investigator

One in four Canadians who are 15 years old and over are caregivers. They provide care for friends and family who have a long-term illness, disability or are aging. While caregiving can be rewarding, it can also harm the caregiver's work productivity and health. Caregivers may be less productive while at work and they may have to reduce their paid work time, miss work, or need to leave their jobs. Many caregivers experience emotional and physical stress that can harm their health and lead to financial costs for individuals and society as a whole. Yet, caregivers are critical to our health care system as they reduce the use of public funding for home care and health services. Governments offer support programs for caregivers, such as employment insurance benefits, tax credits, and monthly allowances. Some workplaces provide flexible work arrangements and paid and unpaid leaves to their caregiver employees. Further research is still needed to determine how caregiving responsibilities impact the caregiver's health-related quality of life and work productivity and determine whether government and workplace programs effectively support caregivers in Canada. Our study will shed light on the social and economic burden of caregiving and provide findings to improve how we measure caregiver health-related quality of life and loss of work productivity for future studies. This research will recommend policies that can help ease caregiving responsibilities, improve caregivers' overall wellness and work productivity, and reduce inequities related to social and economic factors, such as caregiver age, sex, gender, and cultural identity.