Parental health and socioeconomic consequences of caring for children with type 1 diabetes
Caring for a child with a chronic disease may entail high levels of parenting stress. Here, we investigate the cardiovascular, psychiatric, and socioeconomic consequences for parents of children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in Sweden.
Details
- Funder: Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare,The Swedish Diabetes Foundation, the Swedish Child Diabetes Foundation, the Swedish Society of Medicine, the Family Ernfors Fund, the P. O. Zetterling Foundation, and the Nils Erik Holmsten Foundation.
Project description
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by severe insulin deficiency. Parents of children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes shoulder the main responsibility for childcare and disease management, including mainstay insulin administration and continuous monitoring of glucose levels, dietary intake, and physical activity levels. They also manage acute hypoglycaemic and hyperglycaemic events and ensure proper diabetes care in preschool and school settings. As a result, caring for a child with type 1 diabetes may entail high levels of parental stress, affecting cardiovascular and psychiatric health as well as labor force participation. Understanding these health and financial consequences, and how they contribute to the overall familial burden of the disease, may inform and improve future parental support strategies.
The cross-disciplinary project leverages a population-based register linkage across national health, population, and quality registers. The study population includes the biological parents of more than 18,000 children born between 1987 and 2020, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before the age of 18, alongside over 700,000 population-based parental controls and 10,000 parental siblings.