Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Family caregivers play an essential and profound role in helping individuals cope with their dementia/cognitive decline and to remain at home for as long as possible. Caregivers' support is all-encompassing, including helping with daily functions (e.g., using the washroom), providing emotional and social support, and managing their health care. Yet, few studies fully explore how caregiving for individuals with dementia/cognitive impairment changes over time or over the course of the care-recipients' decline. It is also unclear how caregiving impacts both the care-recipients' outcomes and caregivers' health and well-being. In my proposed fellowship project, I will explore the caregiving experience from both the care-recipients' and caregivers perspective, with the following aims: 1) Describe who the caregivers are, the care they provide, and how these changes over time. 2) Examine how caregiving impacts the care-recipients' speed and type of cognitive decline and their ability to stay at home. 3) Explore how caregiving affects the caregiver's health and well-being, and identify the different factors that can be addressed to reduce these negative outcomes. I will use large, health administrative data on the entire Ontario population as well as in-depth national survey data to achieve these aims. This project will inform policies and practices to help people with dementia/CI to safely age in the community for longer and with better quality of life. It will also identify vulnerable caregivers and inform how best to support them.