State Strategies to Improve Quality and Efficiency: Making the Most of Opportunities in National Health Reform

Examines ten states' initiatives to address key components of quality and efficiency improvement, including data collection, aggregation, and standardization; public reporting; payment reform; consumer engagement; and provider engagement

Families as Care-Providers versus Care-Managers? Gender and Type of Care in a Sample of Employed Canadians

This article extends previous research by examining care management as a distinct type of informal care. Using data drawn from a large Canadian study of work and family, the research is based on a study of a sub-sample of women (1068) and men (805) who were employed full-time and who had provided help to an elderly relative during the six month period preceding the interview. Results indicate that managerial care is a meaningful construct that denotes a distinct type of care. Most commonly, individuals combine managerial care with other types of assistance. Managerial care is a very common activity among caregivers and usually involves aspects of care other than arranging for formal services. Managerial care has an adverse impact on job costs and personal costs, and, among women, is associated with greater stress.elderly; caregiving

Women, Work and Caregiving: How Much Difference Does a Great Job Really Make?

This paper examines whether type of job makes a difference in (a) the likelihood that individuals are providing assistance to elderly relatives, (b) the 'costs' associated with this provision, in terms of both job-related and personal costs, and (c) whether observed relationships differ for men and for women. Data are derived from a sample of Canadian employees who participated in a study of work/family balance conducted by the Work and Eldercare Research Group of CARNET: The Canadian Aging Research Network, based at the University of Guelph. The analysis compared full-time employees in three job categories: managerial/professional (n = 1,996); semi-professional (n = 1,270) and clerical, sales, service, craft and trades (n = 2,112). The data indicate no differences between the three occupational groups in the likelihood of providing assistance to elderly relatives. The relationship between job type and both job and personal costs was found to vary in relation to the extent of involvement in the caregiver role. Job costs include lateness, absenteeism, foregoing promotions, missed meetings, and so forth, while personal costs include the perception of work interference with family life, and perceived levels of stress. Among employees providing between 1 and 4 hours of assistance on average per week, gender is associated with significant differences in job and personal costs. This is not true for those providing more hours of care. For both men and women, there appears to be a threshold (5 or more hours of care on average per week) beyond which neither gender nor job type makes a difference in terms of job and personal costs.caregiving; job costs

Families as Care-Providers versus Care-Managers? Gender and Type of Care in a Sample of Employed Canadians

This article extends previous research by examining care management as a distinct type of informal care. Using data drawn from a large Canadian study of work and family, the research is based on a study of a sub-sample of women (1068) and men (805) who were employed full-time and who had provided help to an elderly relative during the six month period preceding the interview. Results indicate that managerial care is a meaningful construct that denotes a distinct type of care. Most commonly, individuals combine managerial care with other types of assistance. Managerial care is a very common activity among caregivers and usually involves aspects of care other than arranging for formal services. Managerial care has an adverse impact on job costs and personal costs, and, among women, is associated with greater stress.elderly; caregiving

Caught in the Middle? Occupancy in Multiple Roles and Help to Parents in a National Probability Sample of Canadian Adults

This paper considers for a Canadian national probability sample of middle-aged women and men the question of how typical is the experience of being "caught in the middle" between being the adult child of elderly parents and other roles. Three roles are examined: adult child, employed worker, and parent (and a refinement of the parent role, being a parent of a co-resident child). Occupancy in multiple roles is examined, followed by an investigation of the extent to which adults in various role combinations actually assist older parents and whether those who provide frequent help are also those "sandwiched" by competing ommitments. The majority of middle-aged children do not provide frequent help to parents. Notably, the highest proportion of daughters who assist elderly parents are those in their fifties whose children are no longer co-resident. For both sons and daughters, being "caught in the middle" is far from a typical experience in this cross-sectional analysis.multiple roles

Capacity Building with Communities

Meagen Rosenthal & Anne Cafer, Co-Directors for the Community First Research Center for Wellbeing & Creative Achievement (CREW)https://egrove.olemiss.edu/research_presentations/1014/thumbnail.jp

Age-Gapped and Age-Condensed Lineages: Patterns of Intergenerational Age Structure among Canadian Families

This paper examines intergenerational connections within Canadian families. Its focus is on intergenerational age structure, the interval or 'gap' in years that separates one generation from the next. Intergenerational age structure is measured in terms of the age of a mother at the birth of her first child. Using data from the 1995 General Social Survey of Canada, the study examines the socio-demographic characteristics of women (n=404) in three- and four-generation families (lineages) that are age-condensed (small age distances between generations that are the result of early fertility) and those that are age- gapped (with large age distances between generations that are the result of late fertility patterns). Across two generations of women, there is a striking similarity in the distributions of age at first birth with just under one-third of the sample having early fertility, just over one-half falling into a normative or "on-time" category, and one-seventh having delayed fertility. However, when matched pairs of mothers and daughters are compared across generations, age-condensed and age-gapped lineage patterns show considerable variability. Although just under one-half of mother-daughter dyads show lineage consistency in family age structure across three generations (most typically in age-condensed/age-condensed or normative/normative age structures), low percentages of women whose family of origin was age-gapped repeat that age structure pattern in their own families of procreation. Socio-demographic factors such as mother's and daughter's age, family size, age at first marriage, and level of education are associated with lineage continuity and discontinuity in family age structure.intergenerational age structure; GSS

Health Landscapes in the South: Rurality, Racism, and a Path Forward

This conversation about health disparities in the South, with questions composed by the authors, incorporates the medical expertise of Brookshield Laurent and Jennifer Conner from the New York Institute of Technology’s Delta Population Health Institute at Arkansas State University, with the social science expertise of Raeda Anderson from the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and Meagan Rosenthal and Anne Cafer from the University of Mississippi.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studythesouth/1004/thumbnail.jp