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Health Cultures in the Global South
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Policy and Care in Tandem: Structuring Youth Volunteerism for Psychological Benefits in Pediatric Palliative Care
Modernizing Care for Older Adults: Long-term Care Policy Evolution and Challenges in China
The evolution of long-term care policy in China is a complex response to the nation’s demographic shift and socioeconomic changes. Despite extensive policy development, discrepancies between policy intentions and real-world demands of older adults persist. This paper dissects the dynamics that have shaped China’s aging policies from the 1950s to the present, identifying gaps between policy formulations and market response and the challenges of navigating a fragmented regulatory landscape. A misalignment has emerged between the undersupply of home and community-based services and overstocked institutional care capacity, resulting in resource underutilization and diverging from intended policy outcomes. This paper further explores the regulatory fragmentation within China’s long-term care sector, indicating that decentralized supervision is a significant barrier to achieving cohesive governance and effective policy implementation. It illustrates the critical need for adaptive policy mechanisms that better align with demographic realities and consumer expectations. This paper contributes to the discourses on long-term care policy by offering insights into the effectiveness of China’s strategic initiatives in recent years and suggesting directions for future policy refinement.
Exploring Home-Based Caregiving for People with Alzheimer’s Disease: A Qualitative Analysis of Challenges and Reforms
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) poses significant challenges for caregivers, particularly in home-based settings. This study examines the caregiving situation of an upper-middle class family in Shanghai to capture the personal and cultural factors that shape caregiving practices. The examination of the characteristics of AD caregivers could not only lead to better fulfillment of care expectations and hence better health outcomes for patients but also offer insights into caregivers’ expectations and workforce training needs.
By applying role theory to understand caregiving dynamics in our care study of a family with an older adult with AD, we identified four stages of the primary caregiver’s role transition. Research data were collected through in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations etc.. The findings revealed that primary caregivers struggles with psychological and financial pressures involved in high-quality home-based care. However, this stress could be largely alleviated by supplementary caregiving services.
To enhance the sustainability of effective home-based AD caregiving, stakeholders should explore various compensation schemes, enhance mental health support for primary caregivers, and improve the professional skills and awareness of supplementary caregivers to improve care outcomes.
