Health Promotion Needs among Home Care Aides: Let's Listen to Their Voices

Home care aides play critical roles for seniors to stay in the community by providing housekeeping and routine personal care services. While promoting health among those workers is essential for strengthening this core workforce, little is known about their health issues. To understand home care aides' perceptions of their own health promotion needs and their current and potential roles for their clients' health, we conducted six focus groups with home care aides as well as a focus group with home care supervisors in a large Midwest city. Our research revealed work stress as a dominant factor leading to mental and physical health problems (e.g., hypertension, depression, injuries) among home care aides. Given the need for income and the lack of health benefits, home care aides continue to work despite health problems, often resulting in long-term health consequences (e.g., chronic pain, diabetes). On the other hand, chronic health problems sometimes motivate home care aides to make proactive changes, such as starting exercising. Home care aides identified facilitators and barriers for health promoting behaviors as well as several factors that may help lessen their work stress: enhanced hands-on training, increased availability of clients' health and family information, and health promoting/stress reduction programs. Home care aides are already playing important roles to promote health and function among frail home-bound seniors, and their potential roles should be further explored. Promoting health among home care aides is important not only to address their health needs, but also to provide quality home care.