Benefits and barriers: Exploring complete and sustained ecological stove usage in rural Mexico

Informal caregivers provide a substantial portion of long-term health care to the elderly in the United States, and the need and demand for informal caregiving is projected to increase as the population ages. The well-established phenomenon of "caregiver burden" suggests that caregivers are more likely to experience psychiatric and physical health morbidities as compared to noncaregivers. One of the factors behind their poorer health outcomes may be that caregivers have less time to care for themselves, and are subsequently less likely to engage in preventive health behaviors. This study sought to (1) examine the association between caregiver status and engagement in a series of routine health-promoting behaviors, (2) focus on populations of caregivers who suffer from chronic conditions and their health behaviors, and (3) assess the presence of an interaction between sex and caregiver status. Data was collected from the 2000 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, and analyzed using the Chi-Squared test and logistic regression. Results indicated that caregivers were more likely to engage in a number of health-promoting behaviors such as receiving an annual flu vaccination, having a routine check-up, having a cholesterol check, participating in regular physical activity for thirty or more minutes a session for five sessions a week or in some form of leisure-time physical activity as compared to non-caregivers. Among disease-specific populations, caregivers with cardiovascular disease were more likely to engage in regular physical activity or some form of leisure-time physical activity as compared to non-caregivers with cardiovascular disease; the same trends were demonstrated among individuals with arthritis. There did not appear to be a significant interaction between caregiver status and sex for the majority of outcomes assessed, except that female caregivers seemed to demonstrate significantly higher odds of engaging in physical activity as compared to male caregivers. These results suggest that caregivers may be equally, if not more likely to engage in common health-promoting behaviors. Future efforts should be taken to understand other contributors to caregiver burden beyond engagement in prevention, such as the psychosocial stress of caregiving responsibilities, or the material disadvantages experienced by this population so as to develop interventions that minimize their risk for poor health outcomes.