Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

About one in four adult Canadians provides unpaid care to a family member, friend, or neighbour with chronic illness, disability, or age-related needs. Nationally, caregivers supply 70% of all home care, and governmental aging-in-place policies continue to emphasize home-based care delivery. As the population ages, health systems increasingly depend on caregivers' contributions. Yet the consequences for caregivers remain insufficiently understood. Evidence shows that caregiving is meaningfully experienced, but is often time-intensive and associated with declines in health, work productivity, and constrains labour-force participation. This study examines how care delivery models shaped by aging-in-place policies affect caregivers in Canada. Using mixed-methods, we quantify caregiving intensity, identify caregiver subgroups, and evaluate associations between governmental and workplace supports and caregivers' health, quality of life, productivity, and employment outcomes. We assess disparities across gender, age, racial backgrounds, socioeconomic position to better understand inequities in experiences and outcomes. Grounded in patient-oriented and caregiver-centred principles, the study incorporates engagement with caregivers throughout. Evidence is co-generated to reflect caregivers' lived experiences across home, community, and long-term care. Findings will also bring needed evidence to light for women-who disproportionately assume high-intensity roles-and inform caregiver-supportive workplace practices. By linking caregiving intensity with support use, health outcomes, and labour-force participation, this work addresses a critical gap in health policy research. Findings will inform innovations in how care is delivered, advance health equity, and support the evaluation of programs for caregivers. Ultimately, the study generates evidence essential for guiding future policy attentive to the broader impacts of aging-in-place mandates on both patients and caregivers.