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Primary Submission Category: Socioeconomic status
WILLINGNESS OF UNPAID CAREGIVERS TO SHARE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH INFORMATION WITH HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS
Authors: Babatope Ogunjesa, Sunita Dodani,
Presenting Author: Babatope Ogunjesa*
Introduction: Unpaid caregivers in the United States navigate substantial social and economic burdens while coordinating care for others, yet their willingness to have social determinants of health (SDOH) information shared across health care providers remains unexplored in nationally representative data. This study examined factors independently associated with willingness to have SDOH information shared with other providers among unpaid caregivers, using data from the Health Information National Trends Survey, Cycle 7 (HINTS 7), a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults conducted by the National Cancer Institute.
Method: The outcome, willingness to share SDOH with other providers, was dichotomized from a 4-point comfort scale: willing (very/somewhat comfortable) versus not willing (very/somewhat uncomfortable). The analytic sample was restricted to unpaid caregivers (n = 692). A survey-weighted binary logistic regression model was estimated, adjusting for caregiving condition type, sociodemographic characteristics, health system trust, prior medical discrimination, patient-centered communication quality, and five binary indicators of personal SDOH burden.
Result: The type of condition being cared for was not independently associated with SDOH sharing willingness after full covariate adjustment, with all condition-type estimates clustering near the null. Patient-centered communication quality (PCC) was the strongest and most consistent predictor: each 10-point increase in PCC was associated with approximately 27% greater odds of willingness to share SDOH with other providers (OR = 1.024 per unit, 95% CI [1.009, 1.039], p = .002). Hispanic caregivers had nearly three times the odds of being willing to share SDOH information compared to Non-Hispanic White caregivers (OR = 2.86, 95% CI [1.24, 6.58], p = .015). Caregivers with household incomes of $100,000 or more demonstrated significantly greater willingness to share relative to those with incomes below $35,000 (OR = 3.33, 95% CI [1.20, 9.27], p = .022). Housing instability showed a near-significant positive trend (OR = 2.55, 95% CI [0.97, 6.70], p = .058).
Conclusion: These findings indicate that, among unpaid caregivers, willingness to share SDOH information across providers is primarily driven by the relational quality of patient-provider communication, racial and ethnic identity, and income, rather than by the type of condition being cared for. Efforts to improve SDOH information sharing in caregiving populations should prioritize strengthening patient-centered provider communication and addressing structural barriers to health system trust, particularly among lower-income and non-Hispanic White caregiver groups, which demonstrated comparatively lower willingness to share in this analysis.
Keywords: unpaid caregivers, social determinants of health, patient-centered communication