Sponsor
This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers RF1AG058545 to ARQ; grant numbers R01AG047891 and R33AG045050 to HGA who also contributed from the Yale Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center P30AG021342).
Published In
BMC Geriatrics
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-7-2024
Subjects
Multimorbidity, Comorbidity, Chronic diseases -- Etiology
Abstract
Older adults with varying patterns of multimorbidity may require distinct types of care and rely on informal caregiving to meet their care needs. This study aims to identify groups of older adults with distinct, empirically-determined multimorbidity patterns and compare characteristics of informal care received among estimated classes. Methods Data are from the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS). Ten chronic conditions were included to estimate multimorbidity patterns among 7532 individuals using latent class analysis. Multinomial logistic regression model was estimated to examine the association between sociodemographic characteristics, health status and lifestyle variables, care-receiving characteristics and latent class membership. Results A four-class solution identified the following multimorbidity groups: some somatic conditions with moderate cognitive impairment (30%), cardiometabolic (25%), musculoskeletal (24%), and multisystem (21%). Compared with those who reported receiving no help, care recipients who received help with household activities only (OR = 1.44, 95% CI 1.05–1.98), mobility but not self-care (OR = 1.63, 95% CI 1.05–2.53), or self-care but not mobility (OR = 2.07, 95% CI 1.29–3.31) had greater likelihood of being in the multisystem group versus the some-somatic group. Having more caregivers was associated with higher odds of being in the multisystem group compared with the some-somatic group (OR = 1.09, 95% CI 1.00-1.18), whereas receiving help from paid helpers was associated with lower odds of being in the multisystem group (OR = 0.36, 95% CI 0.19–0.77). Conclusions Results highlighted different care needs among persons with distinct combinations of multimorbidity, in particular the wide range of informal needs among older adults with multisystem multimorbidity. Policies and interventions should recognize the differential care needs associated with multimorbidity patterns to better provide person-centered care.
Rights
© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1186/s12877-024-05158-z
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42244
Citation Details
Liu, R., Nagel, C. L., Chen, S., Newsom, J. T., Allore, H. G., & Quiñones, A. R. (2024). Multimorbidity and associated informal care receiving characteristics for US older adults: a latent class analysis. BMC Geriatrics, 24(1).