Examining live-in foreign domestic helpers as a coping resource for family caregivers of people with dementia in Singapore

In Singapore, the responsibility of caring for persons with dementia falls on family members who cope with long - term caregiver burden depending on available support resources. Hiring foreign domestic workers to alleviate caregiver burden becomes a prevalent coping strategy that caregivers adopt. This strategy allows caregivers to provide home care as part of fulfilling family obligations while managing caregiver burden. This study aimed to investigate primary caregivers’ relationship with hired support and its impact on coping with caregiver burden. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with primary caregivers who hired live-in domestic helpers to take care of their family members with dementia. The findings revealed that caregivers perceived the normative obligations to provide home care to family members with dementia. They sought support from domestic helpers to cope with physical and mental burnout, disruption of normal routines, and avoidance of financial strain. A mutual-support relationship was built between caregivers and domestic helpers through trust and interdependence. The presence of domestic helpers as a coping resource reveals the positive outcomes of problem, emotional, and diversion focused coping. This study illustrates that coping strategies are employed in different ways depending on the needs of caregivers, access to infrastructure, cultural expectations, and available resources

Examining live-in foreign domestic helpers as a coping resource for family caregivers of people with dementia in Singapore

In Singapore, the responsibility of caring for persons with dementia falls on family members who cope with long - term caregiver burden depending on available support resources. Hiring foreign domestic workers to alleviate caregiver burden becomes a prevalent coping strategy that caregivers adopt. This strategy allows caregivers to provide home care as part of fulfilling family obligations while managing caregiver burden. This study aimed to investigate primary caregivers’ relationship with hired support and its impact on coping with caregiver burden. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with primary caregivers who hired live-in domestic helpers to take care of their family members with dementia. The findings revealed that caregivers perceived the normative obligations to provide home care to family members with dementia. They sought support from domestic helpers to cope with physical and mental burnout, disruption of normal routines, and avoidance of financial strain. A mutual-support relationship was built between caregivers and domestic helpers through trust and interdependence. The presence of domestic helpers as a coping resource reveals the positive outcomes of problem, emotional, and diversion focused coping. This study illustrates that coping strategies are employed in different ways depending on the needs of caregivers, access to infrastructure, cultural expectations, and available resources

Validation of the Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire in 5 and 6 Year-Old Children: The GUSTO Cohort Study

Revised subscales of the Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) have been proposed to be more appropriate for assessing appetitive traits in Singaporean 3 year-olds, but the CEBQ has not yet been validated in older children in this population. The current study aimed to validate the CEBQ at ages 5 (n = 653) and 6 (n = 449) in the ethnically diverse GUSTO cohort. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) examined whether the established eight-factor model of the CEBQ was supported in this sample. Overall, the CFA showed a poor model fit at both ages 5 and 6. At both ages 5 and 6, an exploratory factor analysis revealed a six-factor structure: food fussiness, enjoyment of food, slowness in eating, emotional undereating, emotional overeating and desire to drink. Cronbach’s alpha estimates ranged from 0.70 to 0.85 for all subscales. Criterion validity was tested by correlating subscales with the weight status of 6 years of age. At age 5 and 6, lower scores of slowness of eating while higher scores of enjoyment of food was associated with child overweight. At age 6, higher scores of desire to drink was also associated child overweight. In conclusion, a revised six factor-structure of the CEBQ at ages 5 and 6 were more appropriate for examining appetitive traits in this sample

Finding voice: Enacting agency for reproductive health in the context of culture and structure by young Nepalese women

Forty-four percent of the females between the ages of 16-24, in Nepal, are already married. Of them, twenty-four percent are already mothers or pregnant with their first child, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) 2001 Demographic Health Survey. Such that, traditional approaches to health care are concerned [only] with healthy childbearing, without extending the focus beyond childbearing to address wider issues of women’s reproductive rights, restricting women’s health to a narrow focus of fertility rather than on the rights to social well being (Zurayk, 2001; Ostlin, George, Sen, 2003). Questionably, women’s voices are typically absent from the dominant discourse of health communication (Mookerjee, 2003). This absence is particularly salient in the realm of the voices of poor women (Airhihenbuwa, 1992, 1995; Steeves, 2000). Furthermore, on-going research on health does not focus on how people define their meanings of health and how they maintain their health within their own cultural, political and economical context (Garcia, 2006). In doing so, the dominant framework of health campaigns leaves out the broader socio-cultural, political and economic contexts of health determinants; instead, assumes individual loci of responsibility to change. This indicates the need for culture-centered approach, which embraces culture as a constitutive space where unheard voices of the marginalized are centered (Dutta, 2008; Dutta-Bergman, 2004a, Dutta & Basnyat, 2006). Here, the experiences of the marginalized are centralized to examine the discursive processes through which culture has engaged in the social construction of marginalia. Additionally, in utilizing a feminist lens, the invisibility and distortion of women and their experiences (Hedge, 1998) can be situated, analyzed and interpreted within its historical, socio political and economic contexts. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand how poor Nepalese women between the ages of 18-24 negotiate and create meaning of their reproductive health. This study is situated to explore how culture and structure influences a woman’s health behavior and furthermore to examine how agency and resistance are enacted in this process. In essence, this study explores narratives about reproductive health as articulated by young Nepalese women living under poverty, to foreground the traditionally unheard and marginalized voices

Perspectives of young Chinese Singaporean women on seeking and processing information to decide about vaccinating against human papillomavirus

10.1080/03630242.2017.1342741Women & Health587806-82

Exploring Family Support for Older Chinese Singaporean Women in a Confucian Society

10.1080/10410236.2016.1146568Health Communication325603-61

Negotiating biomedical and traditional chinese medicine treatments among elderly Chinese Singaporean women

10.1177/1049732314551991Qualitative Health Research252241-25

Social Media Health Promotion and Audience Engagement: The Roles of Information Dissemination, Organization-Audience Interaction, and Action Confidence Building

10.1080/10410236.2022.2150809Health Communication3914-1

Applying the Modified Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking to Online Health Information Seeking in the Context of India

10.1080/10810730.2018.1493058Journal of Health Communication236563-57

The Paradox of Fair Trade : The Influence of Neoliberal Trade Agreements on Food Security and Health

One of the essential components of health is food. Food calls our urgent attention because it constitutes “the overriding human need, the very means of life, recognized in the charter of United Nations as a human right” (Madeley, 2000, p. 25). Food is a fundamental necessity in our lives. The Food Research Action Center (2005) notes a wide range of negative health outcomes due to hunger and malnutrition: hungry persons suffer from two to four times as many individual health problems, such as unwanted weight loss, fatigue, headaches, inability to concentrate and frequent colds; the mortality rate is closely related to inadequate quantity or quality of the diet; iron-deficiency anemia in children can lead to negative health effects such as developmental and behavioral disturbances that can affect children’s ability to learn; pregnant women who are undernourished are more likely to have low-birthweight babies and these babies are more likely to suffer delays in their physical and cognitive development; in addition to having a detrimental effect on the cognitive development of children, malnourishment results in the loss of knowledge, brainpower, and productivity for the nation; hunger and malnutrition aggravate chronic and acute diseases and speed the onset of degenerative diseases among the elderly; finally, hunger and food insecurity have an emotional impact on children, their parents, and the communities. Hunger, therefore, has tremendous impact on people’s health, quality of life, and the decisions made along the life path