HealthQ Special: Caregiving in the Sandwich Generation
Join the conversation as the HealthQ team explores the messiness, humor, and satisfaction that comes with caregiving when you’re sandwiched between aging parents and growing kids.
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Join the conversation as the HealthQ team explores the messiness, humor, and satisfaction that comes with caregiving when you’re sandwiched between aging parents and growing kids.
Being a caregiver can start long before you go to a doctor appointment with a loved one or move your parents into your house. The HealthQ team explores how embracing the role matters — and how the recognition and support that come next can ease a difficult season of life.
Squeezed between their young children and aging parents, the sandwich generation is juggling a lot. KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony discusses embracing her identity as a caregiver and which resources are available to Washington, D.C., residents caring for family members.
In the U.S., more than a dozen kinds of cancer are on the rise among people under 50. The HealthQ team shares the latest guidance on being proactive with your family and doctor.
Anxious kids can benefit from counseling, but therapy demands a commitment of money and time. Therapists recommend using three criteria to help determine when challenging behavior rises to the level of needing professional help.
The Family and Medical Leave Act gives eligible employees up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for caregiving. But the federal policy has noteworthy limitations. The HealthQ team explains.
Some children are healthy enough to leave the hospital after a medical stay but have no place to go. Across the country, the practice of allowing children to remain hospitalized “beyond medical necessity” has become a costly problem, and states have struggled to address the issue.
With shortages of medical professionals and an aging population, thousands of community healthcare workers prevent older adults from falling through the cracks.
Iowa patient advocates say that in the face of federal Medicaid cuts, the state is quietly reducing in-home services that help people avoid being institutionalized. National groups are bracing for similar cuts elsewhere.
Idaho is positioning to slash Medicaid funding as state lawmakers grapple with the effects of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last year. On the table are in-home care services.
Republicans have said new rules requiring many Medicaid participants to work 80 hours a month will pinpoint unemployed young people who should have jobs. Policy researchers say the rules are more likely to disrupt coverage for middle-aged adults, harming their physical and financial health.
Demand for home health care, including at-home hospice care, has skyrocketed since the onset of the covid pandemic. A New Orleans nonprofit is teaching people how to provide end-of-life care for relatives and community members.
As families fracture, people are living longer and are more likely to find themselves without close relatives or friends at the end of their lives.
North Carolina and Idaho are cutting their Medicaid programs to bridge budget gaps, raising fears that providers will stop taking patients and that hospitals will close even before the brunt of a new federal tax-and-budget law takes effect.
A proposed work requirement would make Medicaid expansion enrollees prove they’re working or meet other criteria. Most already work, but millions are expected to lose coverage if the provision passes, many from red tape. A Missouri mother who cares for her disabled son would probably be subject to the rule.
KFF Health News journalists made the rounds on national or local media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
As state officials anticipate Medicaid funding cuts that could strip resources for those with disabilities and chronic health conditions, an army of unpaid caregivers waits in the wings: children. At least 5.4 million kids are estimated to be caring for family members at home, a number likely to rise if Medicaid cuts hit professional home-based services.
People with dementia often forget even close family members as the disease advances. “It can throw people into an existential crisis,” an expert said.
KFF Health News journalists made the rounds on national and local media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
As House Republicans mull a massive $880 billion cut from federal programs likely including Medicaid, constituents, disability advocates, and health care providers are joining forces to lobby GOP members in California — including those who represent rural, deeply conservative pockets that stand to lose the most.
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