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  • Effectiveness of interventions to address the negative health outcomes of informal caregiving to older adults: protocol for an umbrella review

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Public health
Protocol
Effectiveness of interventions to address the negative health outcomes of informal caregiving to older adults: protocol for an umbrella review
  1. Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga1,
  2. Mariam Kirvalidze1,
  3. Lena Dahlberg1,2,
  4. Lawrence B Sacco3,
  5. Lucas Morin4,5
  1. 1Aging Research Center, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Sweden
  2. 2School of Health and Welfare, Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden
  3. 3Stress Research Institute, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
  4. 4Inserm CIC 1431, University Hospital of Besançon, Besançon, France
  5. 5Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Sweden
  1. Correspondence to Dr Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga; amaia.calderon.larranaga{at}ki.se

Abstract

Introduction Informal (unpaid) caregivers play an essential role in caring for older people, whose care needs are often not fully met by formal services. While providing informal care may be a positive experience, it can also exert a considerable strain on caregivers’ physical and mental health. How to best support the needs of informal caregivers remains largely debated. This umbrella review (review of systematic reviews) aims to evaluate (1) whether effective interventions can mitigate the negative health outcomes of informal caregiving, (2) whether certain types of interventions are more effective than others, (3) whether effectiveness of interventions depends on caregiver/receiver, context or implementation characteristics and (4) how these interventions are perceived in terms of acceptability, feasibility and added value.

Methods and analysis We will include systematic reviews of primary studies focusing on the effectiveness of interventions (public or private, unifaceted or multifaceted, delivered by health or social care professionals or volunteers) aimed at reducing the impact of caregiving on caregivers’ physical or mental health. This will also include quantitative and qualitative syntheses of implementation studies. The literature search will include the following databases: Medline, CINAHL, PsycINFO and Web of Science. A key informant-guided search of grey literature will be performed. Quality appraisal will be conducted with the AMSTAR-2 checklist for quantitative reviews and with an ad hoc checklist for qualitative syntheses. Narrative and tabular summaries of extracted data will be produced, and framework synthesis will be employed for weaving together evidence from quantitative studies in effectiveness reviews with findings on implementation from qualitative studies.

Ethics and dissemination This umbrella review will use data from secondary sources and will not involve interactions with study participants; it is thus exempt from ethical approval. Results will be presented at international conferences and will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

PROSPERO registration number CRD42021252841.

  • public health
  • health policy
  • qualitative research
  • clinical trials
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-053117

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors participated in conceptualising the methodology and planning the review process described in this protocol. AC-L drafted the protocol. MK, LD, LBS and LM provided critical revisions and approved the final version of the protocol for submission. All authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work and in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

    • Funding This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) grant number 2020–01544.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.