22 Feb Families of Children With Complex Health Conditions Face Financial and Social Hardships
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Joanna Thomson
Joanna Thomson MD MPH
Assistant Professor
Division of Hospital Medicine
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Children with medical complexity have lifelong and complex illnesses. These children account for a disproportionate amount of pediatric health care use. The lives of families are affected – both financially and socially. We sought to characterize the challenges these families face through examination of financial and social hardships. In a cohort of families with children who receive care at Cincinnati Children’s Complex Care Center, four out of five families reported experiencing at least one hardship. The striking frequencies observed, despite relatively high measures of household socioeconomic status, suggest that these families face great challenges. For example, families frequently experienced the need to borrow money and expected little to no help from family or friends.
In order to benchmark the hardships experienced by families of children with medical complexity, we compared the hardships they experienced to those faced by the families of children with asthma in the Greater Cincinnati Asthma Risks Study. After accounting for key demographic and socio-economic differences between the two groups, families of children with medical complexity experienced similar to higher levels of financial and social hardship. For instance, families of children with medical complexity were over two times as likely to report the inability to pay their rent or mortgage than families of children with asthma.
Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?
Response: Families of children with medical complexity face financial and social hardships. Traditional measures of financial burden (socioeconomic status) seem to underestimate these hardships. Clinicians should strive to assure that families of children with medical complexity are connected to appropriate resources within the healthcare system as well as within the community.
Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Response: Further studies are needed to understand both the causes and consequences of hardships experienced by families of children with medical complexity.
Citation:
Financial and Social Hardships in Families of Children with Medical Complexity.
Thomson J1, Shah SS2, Simmons JM3, Sauers-Ford HS4, Brunswick S4, Hall D5, Kahn RS6, Beck AF7.
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Joanna Thomson MD MPH (2016). Families of Children With Complex Health Conditions Face Financial and Social Hardships
Last Updated on February 22, 2016 by Marie Benz MD FAAD