Cognitive Health Assessment and Establishment of a Virtual Cohort of Dementia Caregivers.
BACKGROUND
Many factors impact caregivers' cognitive health and, by extension, their ability to provide care. This study examined the relationship between psychosocial factors and cognitive performance among dementia caregivers and established a virtual cohort of caregivers for future research.


METHODS
Data on 527 caregivers were collected via a Web-based survey that assessed cognitive performance. Caregiver data were compared to corresponding data from 527 age-, race-, gender-, and education-matched controls from a normative database. Caregiver self-reported sleep, stress, health, and social support were also assessed.


RESULTS
Caregivers performed significantly worse than controls on 3 of 5 cognitive subtests. Stress, sleep, perceived support, self-rated health, years of caregiving, race, and gender were significant predictors of cognitive performance.


CONCLUSIONS
In this sample of dementia caregivers, psychosocial factors interacted in complex ways to impact cognitive performance. Further investigation is needed to better understand how these factors affect cognitive performance among caregivers. This could be accomplished by the establishment of a virtual cohort that facilitates the development of digital tools to support the evaluation and management of caregiver needs in a manner that helps them remain effective in their caregiving roles.
AnthroTronix Inc., Silver Spring, Md., USA.
Corinna
C
Lathan
AnthroTronix Inc., Silver Spring, Md., USA.
Angela S
AS
Wallace
AnthroTronix Inc., Silver Spring, Md., USA.
Rita
R
Shewbridge
Lumos Labs, San Francisco, Calif., USA.
Nicole
N
Ng
Lumos Labs, San Francisco, Calif., USA.
Glenn
G
Morrison
AnthroTronix Inc., Silver Spring, Md., USA.
Helaine E
HE
Resnick
Caregivers; Cognitive performance; Dementia; Psychosocial factors; Virtual cohort