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Reviewing the literature on caregiving in various ethnic and racial cultures unveils a lack of information on caregiver needs, and a need for multiple new ways of approaching interventions.
Nationally, more than a third of households are engaged in caregiving, and women comprise 66 percent of active caregivers. There are differences in estimates of caregiving prevalence among ethnic groups, at 19.7 percent for Asian Americans, 20.3 percent for African Americans, 21.0 percent for Hispanics, and 16.9 percent for whites (National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, 2015). Caregiving involves diverse activities such as personal care, complex medical and nursing tasks, financial and instrumental assistance, and emotional and social support. With the growth of a diverse aging population (with the highest rates of growth among Hispanic, African American and Asian American older adults compared to non-Hispanic whites), higher acuity of individuals with chronic conditions, shorter hospital stays, and limited health services, the complexity and prevalence of care provided in the home is increasing (Ortman, Velkoff, and Hogan, 2014; Reinhard, Levine, and Samis, 2012).
A systematic review of more than thirty years of caregiving literature on diverse populations reveals limited attention to multi-cultural issues, non-theoretical research approaches, and methodological challenges that hamper practical insight on how to better identify, engage, and address caregivers' most pressing concerns (Janevic and Connell, 2001; Dilworth-Anderson, Williams, and Gibson, 2002; Pinquart and Sorensen, 2005). This article synthesizes the multi-cultural caregiving and intervention literature to propose a research agenda that could move the field forward.
Survey Methodology
The literature on family caregiving (e.g., family, friends) for older adults of Latino, African American, Asian American, and Native American ethnicity was identified using the following databases: PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsychInfo, Abstracts in Social Gerontology, Sociological Abstracts, Medline, Health Source, and JSTOR. Terms included were caregivers, informal caregivers, caregiving, family caregiving, kin and non-kin caregiving, home caregiving, aged caregiving; older adults, elderly, aged, old people, older individual, over 60; African American, blacks; Latino, Hispanic (and related national ethnic denominations); Native Americans (and related terms and tribal denominations); Asian Americans (and related national and-or ethnic denominations); race, racial, ethnicity or ethnic, cultural differences.
Citations in published reviews and metaanalyses on the subject of ethnic caregiving were cross-checked for references. Inclusion...