Roughly a quarter of adults in the U.S. are caring for elderly family members or children with an illness or disability — and sometimes both at the same time. Despite family caregiving consuming time and resources for both individuals and governments, social scientists don’t fully understand how it affects the people who do the caregiving, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State. In collaboration with colleagues at Purdue University and the University of Minnesota, the researchers conducted an expansive study of caregiver well-being, finding that the type of geographic location and individual circumstances can impact a caregiver’s health, comfort and happiness even more than their state’s family care policies.

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of primary care patients in a single health system, there were significant disparities in the responsiveness of primary care teams to asynchronous patient-portal messages by race and ethnicity, insurance type, and language. These were partially attributable to slower response times at practices that treat underserved patients.

About The Study: This cross-sectional study aligns with the reported prevalence of developmental coordination disorder and reinforces concerns about under-recognition. None of the parents of children with substantial motor difficulties reported awareness, underscoring the value of structured, objective screening. Unlike earlier studies that focused on older children, this study offers a systematic, scalable approach for early identification in preschoolers that supports timely referral to clinicians for formal diagnosis.