PORTLAND, Ore. – Nearly half of Oregon voters age 40 and older have experience as a family caregiver and three in five believe they will be a caregiver in the future, according to a new survey by AARP that provides a profile of caregivers in Oregon.

Joyce DeMonnin, communications director for AARP Oregon, says people help out loved ones in many different ways, such as running errands and other tasks, and they often don't think of themselves as caregivers.

But, as the survey illustrates, they can feel stress in their role.

"Caregivers have many, multiple stressors, including just the stress of managing someone else's life and your own, and difficulties getting enough rest, exercise, eating healthy,” DeMonnin points out. “And all of that stuff leads to caregivers often having their own health issues."

More than seven in 10 caregivers say they have felt stressed out emotionally.

The survey finds the typical family caregiver is a woman in her 60s caring for a parent in his or her 80s.

Rural Oregonians face an additional challenge: more than half of rural caregivers say it takes more than 45 minutes to get their loved one to a doctor, compared with only 17 percent of urban caregivers.

Elaine Friesen-Strang, volunteer state president of AARP Oregon, left the job market at 58 to care for her father in the last few weeks of his life. She's thankful for the time she got with her father but notes there were consequences.

"Reduced Social Security benefits, loss of health care coverage,” she relates. “It means that it's harder to get into the job market once you are in your 60s.

“So I wouldn't have made a different decision. It's not that it didn't have some long-term negative impacts for me personally."

Friesen-Strang and AARP Oregon are supporting House Bill 3031, which would establish paid family and medical leave.

Friesen-Strang says the bill would make it so that people don't have to leave their job to care for someone in their lives.

The bill is scheduled for a public hearing Monday.

More than eight in 10 survey respondents also support providing respite so that caregivers can get a break from their duties.


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For Older Americans Month, AARP Virginia is hosting an event today about family caregivers.

Virginia caregivers provided $14 billion of unpaid care in 2021.

The roundtable discussion addresses a new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid regulation. It calls for reimbursing medical providers for time spent training family caregivers on certain responsibilities.

Jim Dau, state director of AARP Virginia, said being an unpaid family caregiver can be an arduous struggle with the unknown.

"Frequently, family caregivers will say, they're not really sure they know what they're doing," said Dau. "They leave a care setting, maybe with a stack of documents. It could be 25 pages deep without a real great sense of how to do everything on there."

He added that state-level initiatives such as a family caregiver tax credit can also help.

It would offer people an up to $1,000 tax credit on eligible expenses - such as putting in shower bars or a chair lift, or renting or leasing medical equipment.

The event is from 1 to 2 p.m. at the VHC Health Auditorium. People interested in attending can register online at AARP Virginia's website under the events tab.

Federal legislation is also being considered that could assist family caregivers.

One such bill is the Alleviating Barriers for Caregivers Act - which AARP's Healthcare, Family and Government Affairs Vice President Megan O'Reilly said helps caregivers navigate different information from federal agencies.

"It would really call on federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration and CMS," said O'Reilly, "to look at ways in which they can reduce that burden on caregivers when they're interacting with them."

Other legislation aims to reduce family caregivers' expenses and establish a federal family caregiver tax credit.

Higher utility and everyday costs only compounded caregivers' strained finances during the pandemic.

New research released by AARP Iowa shows how important Social Security benefits are to people who receive them - and the numbers reveal women are far more likely to list those benefits as critical.

About 700,000 Iowans receive Social Security benefits, and 55% are women.

AARP Iowa State Director Brad Anderson said he dug into the data, to find out why women see this as an important issue in their lives - in far greater numbers than men.

He said it's because women tend to have far smaller Social Security checks - due to factors like receiving lower wages than men, and taking on unpaid family care-giving responsibilities during their lives.

"In addition to that, women have fewer resources of retirement income than men," said Anderson. "And so, what that means is, men can rely more on stocks and bonds and pensions - whereas women really rely more heavily on Social Security."

Anderson and other advocates are calling on Congress to address the dwindling Social Security Trust Fund, which could be forced to cut benefits by 2035 unless Congress acts to address the funding shortfall.

In addition to earning less and qualifying for fewer benefits, women also typically live longer than men - which, Anderson says, means they have to stretch their Social Security income even further.

"When you put it all together," said Anderson, "it makes a lot of sense that women find Social Security and the strength of Social Security an extremely important issue, when it comes to the polls that we've seen."

AARP Iowa released its findings on the heels of a national report on the financial health of Medicare and Social Security.

Twenty percent of older adults in central Ohio either were not prepared or did not know if they were prepared for extreme weather, according to a recent study by Ohio State University researchers.

The analysis relied on data from the 2021 Central Ohio Regional Assessment on Aging Survey, which included more than 1,400 adults over age 65 in eight central Ohio counties.

OSU Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work Smitha Rao said the research is meant to be a conversation starter about how older adults are faring, and a launching point for area agencies on aging to help determine who is most vulnerable.

"To get a sense of where the emphasis of service delivery needs to be and who's missed out," said Rao, "because on the face of it you can say that almost 80% of the older adults are prepared, but it is those 20% who are unsure or who are not prepared that we should be focused on."

In counties where greater proportions of older adults had a lower income, lived in subsidized housing, and reported having a disability, higher percentages of respondents also reported not being prepared.

Nearly one fifth of older residents in Fayette County reported missing health appointments or not being able to get medicine, reach their job or place of volunteering, or get to family and friends because of severe weather conditions.

Rao added that the data also show that in some counties, older adults face daily barriers meeting basic needs - not just during extreme weather.

"Those were interesting results that showed up for us, in terms of how many people said that there were everyday disruptions," said Rao, "especially when we looked at the different counties and the differences within that."

Climate projections suggest that Ohioan can expect more heavy rainfall, extreme heat and air pollution days in the coming decades.

Rao said she and her colleagues have started a new project to talk directly to older adults and learn from their experiences, hoping to develop tools that can help them better prepare for emergencies.