2023 UMTRI Innovation Award Winner - Transportation Assistance Burden Scale
My colleague, Dr. St. Louis, and I are recipients of the inaugural University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute Innovation Award.
Intended to jumpstart research activity by funding the collection of preliminary data or a pilot study, the UMTRI Innovation Award supports new collaborative partnerships and novel scholarly work. We proposed to develop and validate a much-needed scale specific to caregiving transportation burden.
Helping Those Who Help Others:
Development of the Transportation Assistance Burden Scale (TABS)
Transportation support is consistently reported as the single most frequently provided caregiving task that families take on after an aging family member has chosen or needed to stop driving themselves. Indeed. Coordinating transportation for an aging family member to access health care providers, groceries and medicines, as well as social or leisure activities all become part of caregiver’s responsibility and contribute to caregiver burden. Physical, and mental capacity of the person being cared for can further exacerbate transportation difficulties and impact caregiving. With shifting demographics, aging baby boomers with fewer children living further away, the need for identifying transportation near and long-term mobility solutions is integral to the safety and continued mobility of this increasingly large cohort.
Yet, caregiver burden has historically been measured holistically, making it difficult to determine specific transportation related burden and, relatedly, specific targeted support interventions. Our study, involving focus groups of caregivers and staged instrument validation, will identify facilitators and barriers to managing personal health and well-being while providing transportation assistance.
A valid measure, tentatively called theTransportation Assistance Burden Scale (TABS), will help move assessment from a global perspective to more specific conceptualizations of transportation-related family caregiver burden to better understand, measure, and tailor interventions.
Development of the TABS measure will support the health and well-being of caregivers as they navigate providing safe mobility for the aging adults in their lives.